Re: desired features for gp backend?

[Ben Abbott]

On Jun 18, 2009, at 12:15 PM, John W. Eaton wrote:

> On 18-Jun-2009, Rob Mahurin wrote:
>
> | Here's an example I've been thinking about for a while: I'd like
> | enough control over Octave's axes to make Tufte's "dot-dash" and
> | "range-frame" plots.  There are currently examples of each at
> |       http://hupp.org/adam/weblog/category/tufte/
> |
> | I can do the dot-dash axes in gnuplot with "set border 0" followed  
> by
> | "set xtics (...data...)" to put major and minor tics in the right
> | place.  But in gnuplot, constructing a command from a datafile is
> | something of a major undertaking.  In octave it's now a one-liner
> |       set(gca,"xticks", get(get(gca,"children"),"xdata"))
> | but that currently puts a label at every point without some clever  
> set
> | (gca,"xticklabel"), and apparently I can't yet specify minor ticks.
>
> Do you mean that it is not currently possible to specify minor tick
> labels, or the locations of minor ticks?  Is this a limitation in
> Octave only, or also Matlab?
>
> | It looks like I even sent a patch suggesting an octave syntax for
> | axis ticks without lines, but it wasn't accepted:
> | 	http://www.nabble.com/axis-manipulations-in-plots-are- 
> unnecessarily-
> | restrictive-td15880016.html
>
> There were a number of replies to your orignal message, and it was
> some time ago.  So if there is still something that was not done or
> does not work now, please submit a new patch or bug report.
>
> jwe

Regarding the old thread, I noticed the suggestion to allow the  
ticklabels to be formated as ...

        set (gca, "xticklabel", "%.2f")

This can be done as a one-liner ...

        set (gca, "xticklabel", sprintf("%.2f|", get (gca, "xtick")))

However, I think it more convenient to support having the ticklabels  
specified as format statements.  If the y-axes units were dollars ...

        set (gca, "yticklabel", "$%.2f")

If the units were um

        set (gca, "yticklabel", "%.2fum")

etc.

However, is the check below sufficient to qualify the ticklabel string  
as being a format?

        ischar (ticklabel) && size (ticklabel, 1) == 1 && any (ticklabel=="%")

... or should something more explicit be done?

Ben

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