[GRASS-user] Labelling in gis.m profile tool

[Michael Barton]

Eric,

I was just able to check, and my updates to add a nice label to the x-axis
and distance values for transect segment markers is in the cvs. I did not
add any tick marks in that update.

Michael


On 3/10/07 1:02 PM, "Michael Barton" <michael.barton at asu.edu> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> On 3/9/07 7:04 AM, "Patton, Eric" <epatton at nrcan.gc.ca> wrote:
> 
>> Patton, Eric wrote:
>>>> Does the gis.m profiler now have additional labels on the x and y
>>>> axes? I've updated to the latest cvs along with make distclean, but
>>>> the profiler only labels the maximum and minimum on the y-axis. IIRC,
>>>> there was some discussion between Michael and Hamish about recent
>>>> improvements to the profiler, but I can't locate the thread.
>> 
>> Hamish:
>>> The profiler (or for that matter the GIS) has no idea what the units of
>>> the raster map are, so the y axis can't be labeled. There is no
>>> formalized raster map meta-data spot for that so we can't just pluck it
>>> from the map, and assuming meters is Bad.
> 
>> 
>> Would there be a way to fit in an optimal number of labels soley based on the
>> amount of postscript space being used by the y-axis? The profiler seems to
>> output an eps of the same dimensions each time, so couldn't the label size be
>> used as a unit of measurement itself for fitting additional labels along each
>> axis? Like an equal interval spacing or something.
>> 
>> ~ Eric.
>> 
> 
> Eric,
> 
> Are you referring to axis labels or tick marks? As Hamish pointed out, there
> is no way to know what units the y axis is in.
> 
> There is probably a way to optimize the number of tick marks, but I haven't
> worked it out and it may be complicated across different system architectures.
> The axes have to be drawn in pixels, mm, cm, or inches (though I'm not sure
> how consistent the relationship between pixels and distance units is across
> systems). The fonts are in points. I don't think that there is a consistent
> relationship between points and pixels across systems either. Maybe the trick
> would be to draw the axes in inches. However, automatic scaling is still kind
> of tricky (e.g., setting an aesthetic max and min to the nearest 1/10/100...).
> You kind of need to do that first to make nice tick marks (e.g., you wouldn't
> want tick marks that represent divisions of 113.267 m)
> 
> I arbitrarily picked x and y axis lengths that seemed to "look pretty good".
> However, they rescale dynamically as the window is changed. I was assuming
> initially that most people would drop the eps into a graphics program to touch
> it up if they wanted publishable quality. TclTk has some on-screen page layout
> capabilities, but they are not particularly rich or strong.
> 
> Michael
> __________________________________________
> Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
> School of Human Evolution & Social Change
> Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
> Arizona State University
> 
> phone: 480-965-6213
> fax: 480-965-7671
> www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton
> 

__________________________________________
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton