[Thread Prev][Thread Next][Index]

Re: beautifying plots (labels & margins)



> I'm trying to make a two-column plot for a poster, two hovmuller plots
> next to each other. There are a few things I cannot figure out so far:
> 
> - how do I prevent Ferret from drawing both year numbers and month
> letters next to the time axis? I just want year numbers.

ppl txlint,low,high   (0,1=yr only; 1,0=mon only; 3,1=every 3rd mon+ every yr)

> - how do I increase the pen thickness of the key labels? I know how to
> change it for title and axis labels (ppl pen 0,7) but I don't know how
> to do it for the key labels.

ppl shakey (see below) allows modification of many things, but not the
pen used to draw the key labels. That's a new one on me.

However, when making one-off plots for presentation, I am willing to do 
some hand-work. It would certainly be possible to redraw the labels by 
hand in whatever pen you wanted. First, get rid of the automatic labels:

In ppl shakey, set the lab-size value very small (but not zero, say 1e-8), 
and the lab-inc value greater than the number of contour intervals. Then 
only the first label will be drawn, just as a tiny dot. That leaves the
way clear for you to draw whatever labels you want. Perhaps a repeat loop
would be easier if there are a lot of them or if you want to automate it.

> - Ferret changes the font size of the key labels depending on how much
> text it has to fit there (1, 2, 3 vs 0.01, 0.02 etc). Is there a way
> to prevent this?

PPL SHAKEY controls the position, label height, skip interval, number of
   digits:

PPL SHAKEY [0=nokey,1=key] [0=hor,1=vert] lab-size lab-inc lab-dig lab-len xlo xhi ylo yhi

   (xlo,xhi,ylo,yhi) are the distances to the lower left and upper right
   corners of the key, measured from the lower left corner of the plot area,
   including margins.

> - How do I decrease the space between the bottom of the plot and the
> title printed by "ppl title"? go margins doesn't do it, this just
> changes the total margin around the plot without moving the title.

First of all, you can remove the title and make your own with a
moveable label wherever you want:

fill/title variable	! no title

But for controlling the margins, the new AXES qualifier on DEFINE VIEW is 
just the thing! It let's you control the plotting area without regard for 
the default margins:

DEFINE VIEW/AXES/x=.2,.98/y=.2,.98 big		! very thin margins
SET VI big
PLOT .....

Looking forward to seeing this poster at EGS (?).

Billy K


[Thread Prev][Thread Next][Index]

Dept of Commerce / NOAA / OAR / PMEL / TMAP

Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | Accessibility Statement