[GRASS-user] Horizontal legend font size

[Hamish]

Paul Moen wrote:
> I want to create a horizontal legend for a raster.
>
> The docs say,
> 
> > When using the mouse or at to size & place the
>   legend, a user may create a horizontal legend by making
>   the box wider than it is tall.
> 
> I read the previous line to mean the only way to create a
> legend is to use at and make the box wider than it is tall.
>  Is that correct?

Yes.

> Can I make a legend horizontal without using at=bottom,top,left,right

>From the command line and xmons you can use 'd.legend -m' to place the
legend with the mouse. I am not sure if you get the same chance from
the GUIs or if the only option there is filling in at=.


> The docs also say,
> 
> > Vertical legends produced with d.legend will place text
>   labels to the right of the legend box, horizontal legends
>   will place text below. This text will be auto-scaled to fit
>   within the frame, reducing the size of the legend if
>   necessary. Legends positioned with the mouse or with
>   the at option will not auto-scale text, in order to provide
>   more control to the user.
> 
> The last line that says that the text will not auto-scale
> when using at,

correct. Only d.legend without at= or -m will autoscale. If manually
placed it will assume you know what you are doing and give you exactly
what you requested.

WRT horizontal scales, I think it only autoscales from the right side of the window, not the bottom. But anyway, full labels are useless in a
horiz legend, they just fall on top of each other.

but see below- what is being autoscaled is the category label.

e.g. "d.legend -n landcover.30m" in the spearfish dataset then adjust
the window so it is narrower and watch it autoscale.


> which means that a horizontal legend¹s text will never auto-scale
> since the horizontal legend can only be made by using at to create
> a box that is wider than it is tall. Am I misinterpreting anything?

a couple of things:
you can make a box wider than it is tall on an xmon using the -m "place
with mouse" command line flag. The GUIs don't use xmons, which forces the
use of at=.

But what I meant by "text labels" is for categorical legends not tick numbers. e.g.:
 [red] pine forest
 [blue] deciduous forest
 [grey] urban area
in this case the "pine forest" text would automatically shrink if it would
fall off the right side of the window.

For horizontal legends font size is purely a function of legend width.
(for vertical legends it is the legend height)
I guess for horiz legends I could look at rotating the font 90deg for
categorical legends with text labels (set with r.cats/r.category). But
I'd wait for strong user demand before spending any time on that.

 
> My problem is that I get a horizontal legend that looks great except
> the text is huge and looks awful.

you mean numbers (category or value) or text labels of categories?
could you provide a screenshot?

is this a floating point (FCELL or DCELL) or categorical (CELL) map?
 [r.info]

 
> How can I change the size of the text in the legend?

you need to recompile d.legend with the following patch:

Index: display/d.legend/main.c
===================================================================
--- display/d.legend/main.c     (revision 32734)
+++ display/d.legend/main.c     (working copy)
@@ -672,7 +672,7 @@
            if (!horiz)
                txsiz = (int)((y1 - y0) / 20);
            else
-               txsiz = (int)((x1 - x0) / 20);
+               txsiz = (int)((x1 - x0) / 25);
 
            /* scale text to fit in window if position not manually set */
            /* usually not needed, except when frame is really narrow   */


adjust the divisor to suit. The above patch makes the font super tiny
for legends which are around 2-3 inches wide, so I am loathe to apply
it in SVN. Maybe it would be better to make textsize it a fn of width^2
so the rate of change was not so dramatic.

 
> The following are my commands.
> 
> d.rast raster at Temp
> d.frame -c frame=leg at=1,10,5,95
> d.legend -s range=0,13.5 labelnum=5 at=80,100,5,95 map=raster at Temp

after changing the scaling with the above patch, this looks nice for me:
  d.legend -s range=0,13.5 labelnum=4 at=50,90,5,95 map=



regards,
Hamish