How to tweak automatic-tics-number in gnuplot?

Question

It is helpful that gnuplot automatically picks up reasonably good x/y-range, and x/y-tics number (say approx 5 as attached figure).

However, I sometimes would like to in

Answer 1

Not sure whether I get your "of course, changing the number of tics is easy" right and I maybe I'm giving the answer you know yourself already - but anyway:

From help set xics:

Positions of the tics are calculated automatically by default or if the autofreq option is given; otherwise they may be specified in either of two forms:

The implicit , , form specifies that a series of tics will be plotted on the axis between the values and with an increment of . If is not given, it is assumed to be infinity. The increment may be negative. If neither nor is given, is assumed to be negative infinity, is assumed to be positive infinity, and the tics will be drawn at integral multiples of .

So to start with - you can play around with the settings yourself:

set xtics -7, 1.5
plot[-7.5:7.5][] sin(x)

which gives you