| Re: Uneven plot symbol sizes [message #90796 is a reply to message #90792] |
Thu, 16 April 2015 06:07   |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
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Senior Member |
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Mats Löfdahl writes:
>
> The most common plot symbol sizes seem to be normalized to a common width, which makes e.g. x symbols come out looking sqrt(2) times larger than + symbols. Same thing with squares vs. diamonds - with circles somewhere in between.
>
> I was sufficiently annoyed by this that I wrote a function that measures "areas" of the different symbols defined by cgsymcat. The function returns the real area of the filled symbols normalized to circles (measured by plotting a single, large, white symbol on a black background with no axes, and measuring the total of the resulting array). For the non-filled symbols the area of the corresponding filled symbols, like filled square for open square and x, filled diamond
for open diamond and +, etc.
>
> If I then plot with the nominal symsize I want divided by the square root of the area for the particular symbols I'm using, the plots look alright to me.
>
> Now that I got it working, I'm wondering if I've just reinvented an existing wheel. Is this something people worry about enough to have fixed it, preferably in a more elegant way than I did it...
I have to admit this is one graphical problem that has somehow avoided
my worry list. But, it also sounds like a good idea. If it is easy to
implement, I would consider adding it (probably as a keyword switch) to
cgSymCat.
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.idlcoyote.com/
Sepore ma de ni thue. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
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