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raswaim · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 69 Location: Houston, TX

David - I see in the revision history that you've added a new feature for general purpose axis labeling, but I haven't tripped over the mechanism for using it yet. Can you give me a pointer?

Thanks - Richard

DPlotAdmin · Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 1:08 am Post subject:

Text>X Labels.

And thanks for the suggestion.
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raswaim · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 69 Location: Houston, TX

Excellent. Is there a macro/DDE call in the works to set these?
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DPlotAdmin · Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 12:10 pm Post subject:

Yes, though somehow I neglected to document it.

[XLabel(x,"label")]

repeat as needed. You can have up to 20 labels. To replace an existing label use the same x value. To delete an existing label at a specific x, use

[XLabel(<x>,"")]

I expect you'll be wanting a few more placement options, which is fine. Like... place these labels one character height below the numbers (horizontal orientation only), and possibly set the orientation independent of the setting for the numbers. Those two will most likely go into the next release and won't break anything in the current version. I wanted to wait for other suggestions from you and others before plugging those in, on the chance that those suggestions might be better incorporated into those options from the start rather than adding them on later.
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raswaim · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 69 Location: Houston, TX

Ok, so there was a good reason I couldn't find it.... The only other thing that occurs to me immediately as an improvement is having a mechanism for querying the locations of the currently assigned grid lines so I could apply my labels to them (and/or forcing grids to be drawn at the x-values specified). I suppose one could always disable grids and just use the reference line facility for the second purpose. Querying the grid locations would be handy in that you already have a default gridding mechanism that works, so I'd be relieved of calculating the appropriate intervals from the extents. Conversely, I've noticed that your date grids tend to ignore user specified intervals (don't think I would classify this as a bug since it gives reasonable results for calendar dates), so I might want to hard specify the labels and grids occasionally.
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raswaim · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 69 Location: Houston, TX

Actually just thought of an additional feature you might want to consider, which is the ability to control which axis (primary or secondary) the labels are applied to (or for that matter, generically to Y-axis as well....).
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DPlotAdmin · Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 6:24 pm Post subject:

Richard,
Thanks for all of your input.

raswaim · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 69 Location: Houston, TX

David - after playing with the date formats a bit more, I'm a little more concerned about the inability to override your grid interval computation. I'm creating large format time based charts (i.e. D size, ~6mo of data) with a great amount of detail, and need to have better control over gridlines. For example, if your date function defaults to 1st and 15th of the month there's no way for me to setup minor gridlines to the day or two day level (which are quite visible on a 34 inch width). Further, with the new day of year format (thanks) the arrythmic gridding created is a bit annoying (day 1,15,32,46...). Any chance you can add an option to use the user specified extents and intervals? (actually I'm not sure you really need to add a control for this; if I click "specify interval", I kind of expect not to get an automatic result... Wink

) - Richard

raswaim · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 69 Location: Houston, TX

OK, strike the part about not being able to get the single day gridlines, I see now that you dynamically adapt the minor grids (not a fixed number between major grids). But the arrythmic numbering is still annoying....
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DPlotAdmin · Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 10:56 am Post subject:

Richard,
In your case I can easily see how this is annoying. I think most users would welcome the "15 days = 1/2 month" bit that's going on, though... so I need to somehow satisfy both groups. Maybe a "real days" interval Smile

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raswaim · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 69 Location: Houston, TX

It looks like you don't have any problem accepting 0.5 months in the interval specifications currently, so perhaps this could be the mechanism for the behaviour you currently implement? There's probably a lot less disagreement about what a half month should look like vs. what 15 days means.... Beyond that, just the fact that I can't force any major (labeled) grids any closer together than 15 days (depending on extents) is an issue. For the most part, anything beyond 4 minor grid lines is "many", and an (irregular) 14 has people counting and marking days in pencil in the margins of my charts!
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DPlotAdmin · Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 5:54 pm Post subject:

Richard,
Thanks for your persistence. It didn't register with me until your last post how atrocious this really was. It needs work yet, but for now I've changed things up such that if you specify a tick mark interval less than 30 days, that's the interval that will be used. No more "if the extents are > 2 years and blah blah blah".

With any luck I'll be uploading an update late tonight with this change in place.
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raswaim · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 69 Location: Houston, TX

David - I imagine the gridding really isn't a big problem for anyone unless they're doing huge charts, since your original defaults work fine for "normal" size plots. As always, I appreciate your willingness to accomodate user request. Thanks - Richard