title: Plotting labeled intervals in matplotlib/gnuplot
body: <p>I have a data sample which looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>a 10:15:22 10:15:30 OK
  b 10:15:23 10:15:28 OK
  c 10:16:00 10:17:10 FAILED
  b 10:16:30 10:16:50 OK
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What I want is to plot the above data in the following way:</p>
  
  <pre><code>captions ^
    |
  c |         *------*
  b |   *---*    *--*
  a | *--*
    |___________________
                       time &gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>With the color of lines depending on the <code>OK/FAILED</code> status of the data point. Labels (<code>a/b/c/...</code>) may or may not repeat.</p>
  
  <p>As I've gathered from documentation for <strong>gnuplot</strong> and <strong>matplotlib</strong>, this type of a plot should be easier to do in the latter as it's not a standard plot and would require some preprocessing. </p>
  
  <p>The question is:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Is there a standard way to do plots like this in any of the tools?</li>
  <li>If not, how should I go about plotting this data (pointers to relevant tools/documentation/functions/examples which do something-kinda-like the thing described here)?</li>
  </ol>