comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive - RDF feed
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description: Messages from Usenet group comp.lang.idl-pvwave, compiled by Paulo Penteado
items: axis handling - wishlist
items: Re: axis

axis handling - wishlist
type: item
description: Hello (especially to people from RSI if they are sneeking in), today I finally got around to take a closer look at the IDL axis handling and spend some thoughts on what I would wish to see in a future release of IDL. Maybe one or the other of you would like to comment or contribute so that we could end up with an even better solution. Th eordering does not express any ranking but is meant to facilitate references. Basically I find that one can very well live with the general scheme of !X, !Y, and !Z variables and all those hundreds of parameters that can be passed to plotting routines. However, I think some tasks could be greatly simplified if the behaviour of some of the elements of !X, !Y, and !Z were slightly changed, and a few more items were added as well as a few more keywords allowed to the plotting routines. Here are my suggestions: !X[YZ] variables: ----------------- (1) !X[YZ] should contain an extra field with their COLOR (index). Additional options would be a field for TITLECOLOR and LABELCOLOR (2) the !X[YZ].STYLE fields should have an additional NOLABEL flag which would have the same effect as TICKNAMES = " ", but is somewhat easier to use and remember. If TICKNAMES is set to " " this NOLABEL flag could automatically be set. (3) !X[YZ].THICK = 0 (or -1) should draw no axis (it's kind of logical, or not?) (4) !X[YZ].TICKS = -1 should prevent tick marks (and minors) (5) !X[YZ].TICKLEN = 0 should also prevent tick marks (6) !X[YZ].GRIDSTYLE = -1 should be default, whereas a GRIDSTYLE ge 0 would automatically set TICKLEN to 1 except if TICKLEN is explicitely given (7) !X[YZ] could sometimes use an additional OFFSET or SHIFT field which for !X would specify an offset in Y, and for !Y an offset in X (haven't thought about !Z). Together with the additional PLOT options I propose below, this would allow easily to draw plots with multiple (more than 4!) axis. (8) two (or three) additional system variables should be !XTOP and !YRIGHT (!Z???) to hold axis informa…
creator: Martin Schultz
date: 1998-01-13T08:00:00-00:00

Re: axis
type: item
description: David Fanning wrote: > R. Bauer (r.bauer@fz-juelich.de) writes: > >> Who knows the mechanism which axis is using to calculate the perfect >> ticknames of the tickmarks? > > Not I. But why would you want to know? If you wish to > modify it in some way, it is as simple as writing your > own tickformat routine and calling it with the [XYZ]Tickformat > keywords. > The mechanism is quite good e.g. PRO tst_range a = findgen(6)-1.5 b = sin(a) plot,a,b,/xstyle,/ystyle END In this example the xrange is [-1.5 ,3.5] and the label algorithm knows that it should not begin labeling by -1.5. I know using of functions called by tickformat may be able to do the same. -- R.Bauer Institut fuer Stratosphaerische Chemie (ICG-1) Forschungszentrum Juelich email: R.Bauer@fz-juelich.de
creator: R. Bauer
date: 1998-05-26T07:00:00-00:00

Re: axis
type: item
description: R. Bauer (r.bauer@fz-juelich.de) writes: > Who knows the mechanism which axis is using to calculate the perfect > ticknames of the tickmarks? Not I. But why would you want to know? If you wish to modify it in some way, it is as simple as writing your own tickformat routine and calling it with the [XYZ]Tickformat keywords. Cheers, David ----------------------------------------------------------- David Fanning, Ph.D. Fanning Software Consulting E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com Phone: 970-221-0438 Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
creator: davidf
date: 1998-05-26T07:00:00-00:00