Minor ticks in plots, and title in subplots

[Pablo]

Hi everyone!

I'm having some trouble setting minor ticks in my plots. I'm using
Octave 3.0.1 (package 1:3.0.1-6lenny3 in Debian Lenny) and Gnuplot 4.5
patchlevel 0 (installed from the web), so the __gnuplot_X_ commands
don't work(*).

Right now I'm using the ytick and yticklabel to simulate minor ticks,
but it's tiresome and, more importantly, all the ticks have the same length.

As an example:
octave:8> plot([1:6])
octave:9> set(gca(),"ytick",[1:0.5:6])
octave:10> set(gca(),"yticklabel", ["1";" ";"2";" ";"3";" ";"4";"
";"5";" ";"6"])

If I use gnuplot, on the contrary, I can do:
gnuplot> plot [t=1:6] t
gnuplot> set mytic 2
gnuplot> replot
and the minor ticks are shorter than the major ones.

Is there any way to do this? Any tips on where should I look?

Also, if I use subplots, and add a title, the title belongs to a subplot
(specifically, to a set of axis). Is there a way to add a title to the
whole thing? Adding it to the upper subplot is not the same because the
resulting subplots have different height.

(*) Well, __guplot_raw__ does work, but I couldn't get it to show me the
minor ticks for some reason. Issuing replot afterwards didn't help, either.

Thanks very much for your help.
  Arnoques