Editor's Note: This file was selected as MATLAB Central Pick of the Week
Panel is an alternative to Matlab's "subplot", providing easier control over layout (particularly, easy elimination of whitespace). It also fixes dashed/dotted lines during export to image files (both vector and bitmap formats).
If you find the layouts generated by subplot() have too much space and not enough axis, try Panel. If you find it tedious to construct subplot layouts that are more complex than a simple grid, try Panel. If you always resort to other software to prepare your final figures for publication because you can't get the appearance you want from Matlab, try Panel.
Panel was designed to produce output for print publications directly from Matlab. Layouts are, by default, in physical units (mm, by default), and exporting to a graphics file targets print columns directly. However, it performs equally well if the end goal is digital display, providing easy control over use of screen real estate.
Panel incorporates features suggested by several Matlab Central users, as well as some code - see the documentation for details.
Questions? Please see the http://www.mathworks.co.uk/matlabcentral/fileexchange/20003-panel/content/docs/faq.html first.
NB: Release 2.11 is required for all functions to work correctly at and beyond Matlab R2014b.
Cite As
Ben Mitch (2019). Panel (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/20003-panel), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .
Comments and Ratings (240)
Updates
| 2.14 | Added find() method, removed an unnecessary constraint, fixed inability to mouse on axes covered by an xlabel/ylabel group axis. |
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| 2.13 | Fixed bug reported by Jiri. |
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| 1.26 | Release 2.12: Fixed minor bug in export syntax, and added return of accessed object to x/y/zlabel and title functions. |
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| 1.25.0.0 | Release 2.11: Fixes one or two things for the Matlab R2014b graphics revamp. Some performance optimisation, also. |
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| 1.24.0.0 | Added link to FAQ. |
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| 1.23.0.0 | Release 2.10: Removes optimisation (LP) problem from layout in favour of analytical solution (faster, does not need opt toolbox). Supports panels of fixed physical size. Supports various packing modes not previously supported. |
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| 1.22.0.0 | Release 2.9. Export infers image format from file extension; units can be set in constructor; adds group descriptor "family"; adds panel.version(); adds LNCS page size. |
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| 1.20.0.0 | Release 2.8. Withdraws panel.plot() in favour of panel.fixdash(), which has the same aim but is much less crude. |
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| 1.18.0.0 | Version 2.7. Changes: added demo of insets (tx Ann Hickox); added panel.plot() to work around poor rendering of dashed lines. |
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| 1.17.0.0 | Release 2.6. Adds support for SVG export (through plot2svg), plus improved documentation. |
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| 1.15.0.0 | Added support for multiple objects per panel (e.g. 2 axes, as suggested by Brendan, see demopanelG). Couple of bugs fixed. NB: Significant change, consider this BETA, please: revert to 2.4 if problems. Can't find anything wrong with it, though. |
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| 1.14.0.0 | Release 2.4. Fixes one bug, whereby a single panel in a figure does not get positioned until the figure is resized. |
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| 1.13.0.0 | Release 2.3, fixed a few bugs is all. |
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| 1.12.0.0 | Version 2.2. Some improvements to the documentation, added the flag "no-manage-font" to disable Panel's font management. Otherwise, unchanged, straight swap. |
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| 1.11.0.0 | Version 2.1 (20 Jul 2011) includes a built-in linear programming solver (due to Jeff Stuart, available on FEX). This allows users without the Optimisation Toolbox to use Panel. Some performance improvements, and added an option to export to PDF. |
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| 1.10.0.0 | Updated information: R2008a is required, based on http://tinyurl.com/3tlzjo4 |
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| 1.8.0.0 | Release of Version 2.0. This release moves to a single implementation file, and moves to a much simpler system for control of layout. |
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| 1.7.0.0 | Added recursive and group labelling and titling, as suggested by Niko. |
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| 1.6.0.0 | 20% faster rendering, fixed figure units bug from years ago, implemented correct handling of "orphaned" panel references. |
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| 1.5.0.0 | Integrated implementation of native axis properties, so that functions like xlabel() and title() and set(gca, 'xticklabel', ...) now work seamlessly with panel. Big tidy of the documentation too. |
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| 1.4.0.0 | Hopefully, really fixed all the tick label bugs this time. Added management of independently-created axes (like colorbars), idea by Arthur Ward. Added grid-like packing to pack(), as previously added to constructor, panel(). |
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| 1.2.0.0 | Fixed a minor bug introduced in the last update. |
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| 1.1.0.0 | Added missing documentation; fixed mis-applied tick labels during export bug; added simple constructor syntax for building panel grids all-at-once. |
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Acknowledgements
Inspired: BlockEdfHeatMapView, HCP (HeatmapCovariatePlot), SpectralTrainFig
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Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi I M,
There is a set of matlab functions, such as image(), which set certain properties of an axis when they operate. For reasons I can't quite remember - I think I did grapple with it once - the fact that panel creates the axis in advance foxes this mechanism in a way that's not so easy to workaround. It's a minor annoyance, that you've found.
There are at least these two solutions - which one you choose will depend on your application.
Solution 1: create the axis yourself, and assign it to panel for management afterwards.
>> p = panel();
>> a = axes;
>> imagesc(im)
>> p.select(a)
Solution 2: let panel create the axis, and set the errant properties afterwards.
>> p = panel();
>> p.select();
>> imagesc(im);
>> set(gca, 'ydir', 'reverse');
Cheers
I M (view profile)
Hi Ben, I'm using panel for plotting a few images using imagesc. However, images are being plotted upside down. Is there a way to correct for this?
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Thanks zwbxyzeng, I have found and fixed the bug - you were right about the cause. Release 2.14, which should appear shortly, should now operate as you were hoping. Thanks for the heads-up, and please let me know if it's not working correctly. Cheers
zwbxyzeng (view profile)
Hi Ben, You can check your example code "demopanel1.m". In the example, the histogram cannot be zoom in/out by mouse. But the curve fitting plot in the left bottom corner can be zoomed.
I guess the reason is, the panel has hidden parent axes to display title/label. when set the title/label, the focus of the figure switch to parent axes, and then the mouse cannot click the children axes and cannot zoom the children axes.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi zwbxyzeng, I haven't seen this problem, sorry - can you please post a minimal example and then I'll be able to check it out? Cheers.
zwbxyzeng (view profile)
hi, Dianne,
what you can do is
ax=p.de.axis(); % this gives you axes array.
then modify the one you want
ax(end).xtick('auto')
zwbxyzeng (view profile)
I want to modify my question. the stretch type panel(e.g. p(1,1).pack(2,3)) can be zoomed while the fixed ratioed panel(e.g. p(1,1).pack({1/3,2/3})) cannot be zoomed. any solution?
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Dianne. Each sub-panel is typically managing a single axis - each of which can have its ticks managed separately - so I don't understand the problem quite, I'm sorry. If you want to post a minimal example, I'll be very happy to have a look at it. Cheers, Ben
Dianne Deauna (view profile)
Hi Ben, thanks for the reply! However when I do something like set(gca,'xtick',[]) it removes the xticks from all of the subpanels. What if I would like at least one of the subpanels to have an xtick? Is there a way to change the property just for that subpanel (i.e., p(m,n).xtick('auto') ). Thanks!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Dianne, think you'd just use the Matlab functions in the usual way. Something like set(gca, 'xtick', [])? Or use 'xticklabel' and {} if you want the ticks but not the text. Cheers.
Dianne Deauna (view profile)
Hi Ben,
Thanks for your answer about colorbars! I have another question, how can I set axis labels to appear only on selected "child" panels? I've tried p(m,n).xtick('auto'); and other variations (xticklabel, xticklabelmode, etc) but I can't get it to display properly. Would appreciate any advice. Thanks!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Dianne,
You asked (but your comment disappeared) how to handle layout of a colorbar, I think it was. Panel handles layout of all graphics objects the same way, by assigning them into a sub-panel. You can create a sub-panel to layout the colorbar, and then use p.select(handle) to hand management of the colorbar "handle" to the specified panel "p". You can then size it however you see fit, in the usual way.
Sounds like you may have already found this solution :).
Cheers
Dianne Deauna (view profile)
Hello, I just figured out how to do it (assign a blank fourth partition to the rightmost area of the graph to create space). So please disregard my question. Thank you very much!
Kevin Walker (view profile)
Mustafa Erguvan (view profile)
Ernst Uzhanskii (view profile)
Thanks!
Gianluca Martini (view profile)
Ian (view profile)
Soooooo much better than subplot!!!! Thank you!!!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
PS. Thanks for the heads-up on the bug, don't know when that started happening but I think it's fixed in 2.13.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Jiri,
Thanks. I'm sorry, I can't figure out what "addSecondaryAxes" is - do you have a link to that, or an example please? Or if you can generate an example of what you are trying to do, perhaps?
Cheers, Ben
Jiri Dostal (view profile)
Dear Ben,
thank you for your wonderful work. That is some fine coding here!
I'm now wondering, how to get "panel" work with my "addSecondaryAxes" function (just different scale there for example). It is similar to demopanelG except, the secondary axes are added after the first axes has been 'selected' to a particular panel. Can you think of a way how to add the secondary axes to by managed by the same panel? I don't think the public set of methods allows me to make this work. Thank you. ..and just a small note, a minor bug in "p.ch.object" (R19a).
Jiri Dostal (view profile)
Tal Sommer (view profile)
raghav rajan (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Thanks all for the positive feedback - it's always nice to hear that people are getting use out of Panel :)
BenoitD (view profile)
Amazing compared to what stock Matlab offers. Well worth investing a bit of time to understand how to use Panel. Thanks a lot.
Chenglin Yu (view profile)
james crone (view profile)
Adrian Ilka (view profile)
Guido Francesco Frate (view profile)
Sorry, i am stupid... the following (as an example of my solved problem) works perfectly:
%
figure(1)
p1 = panel();
p1.pack(N, N);
figure(2)
p2 = panel();
p2.pack(N, N);
%
figure(1)
p1(1, 1).select();
figure(2)
p2(1, 1).select();
%
Ben Mitchinson (view profile)
Hi Max
As the docs for margin say (sorry, it seems that Matlab has undergone changes to the docs system over recent releases so "doc panel" doesn't work anymore, but you can find all the documentation using "edit panel" until that gets fixed):
"... the layout
% algorithm makes all panels as large as possible whilst
% not violating margin constraints. margins are
% respected between panels within their parent and
% between the root panel and the edges of the canvas
% (figure or image file)."
What you are expecting doesn't happen because the margin you have asked for is applied only within the parent, not within the figure window. This design generally does what is expected, which is to keep axis edges aligned perpendicular to the packing dimension (within your "p", the packing dimension is vertical). Occasionally, this is not intuitive, as you've discovered. Try this script:
figure(1)
clf
p = panel;
p.pack(2);
p(1).margin = 40;
p(1).select();
p(2).select();
pause
p.marginleft = 60;
This will show an internal vertical margin (p(1)'s margin within p, i.e. versus p(2)) of 40 then, after a keypress, an external margin for p with the figure window. You may perhaps just want p.marginleft for your intention.
This means that giving p(1) a different marginleft from p(2) versus a neighbouring edge (of figure, or another panel) is not possible (or, rather, by design has no effect). Sibling panels have aligned edges. If you are trying to get those two axes laid out with their left edges aligned differently, there is more than one way to do it, but I'd suggest using a dummy panel, as below, or else see demopanel8 in case that's what you want:
figure(1)
clf
p = panel;
p.pack(2);
p(1).pack('h', 2);
p(1, 1).repack({1e-6});
% p(1, 1).select();
p(1, 1).marginright = 0;
p(1, 2).marginleft = 40;
p(1, 2).select();
p(2).select();
NB: Uncomment the commented line to see what's going on, or use p(...).show().
Equally, this also works, and avoids the "almost zero" constant:
figure(1)
clf
p = panel;
p.pack(2);
p(1).pack('h', 2);
p(1, 1).repack({40});
% p(1, 1).select();
p(1, 1).marginright = 0;
p(1, 2).marginleft = 0;
p(1, 2).select();
p(2).select();
A much older version of panel used to have a parameter named something like "internal_margin" to allow the flexibility you were searching for, but I retired it since it added a great deal of complexity for a rarely-used case. TBH, I can't remember if the current version supports what you want in a more formal way, but as you can see there are hacky ways to get there.
Cheers, Ben
Maximilien Chaumon (view profile)
Hi Ben,
I still don't understand really how margins behave. Would you mind telling me why this doesn't work?
figure;
p = panel;
p.pack(2);
p(1).marginleft=40;
p(1).select();
p(2).select();
I would expect to see p(1)'s left edge shifted 40 px to the right.
How can I set the outer margins of individual packed panels?
Many thanks,
Max
Václav Gerla (view profile)
Dear Naty,
example of using with linkaxes function:
fig = figure();
p = panel(fig);
p.pack(2, 1);
p(1, 1).select();
ax(1) = gca;
plot(rand(1, 100))
p(2, 1).select();
ax(2) = gca;
plot(rand(1, 100));
linkaxes(ax, 'x');
Andre Beckus (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Photonics
You can load up an existing figure, and then overlay a panel object on it, using select(handle) to hand position management of specified elements over to panel. I haven't tried it, but I think it ought to work...
Cheers
Photonics1000 (view profile)
Is there a way to use copyobj to copy existing .fig files into a Panel?
Daniele Mascali (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Wouter
You want "p = panel.recover()". Once you've done this, p is identical to the original object interface, and you don't need to call pack(), select(), again (though you can call select() to make an axis active, and so on).
Cheers, Ben
Wouter (view profile)
Question Ben, how can I re-select an panel after and plot something on top of a previous panel?
i.e.
clear all;close all;clc;
figure(1);
p = panel();
p.pack(1);
p(1).select();
plot(0:0.1:10,sin(0:0.1:10));
clear all; % p object is destroyed
figure(1);
p = panel();
p.pack(1);
p(1).select()
hold all;
plot(0:0.1:10,cos(0:0.1:10));
hold off;
Wouter (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Yonatan
That error message (is it occurring at line 17?) suggests that "p" has been defined to a uipanel object, a matlab built-in object. This could happen, for example, if you have another function on your path called "panel" that returns a uipanel object. Try "which panel" to try to get to the bottom of it. Also, run "clear" before you run demopanel6, in case something in your workspace is affecting the behaviour of the script.
Cheers
-------------------------------------------------------
>> p = uipanel();
>> p.pack('h', 2);
No appropriate method, property, or field 'pack' for class 'matlab.ui.container.Panel'.
Yonatan katz (view profile)
Seems very useful function but return an error for demos:
>> demopanel6
No appropriate method, property, or field 'pack' for class 'matlab.ui.container.Panel'.
version 2017b.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Sewu - thanks for the positive feedback :).
You should "addpath PATH_TO_PANEL", not "addpath PATH_TO_PANEL_panel.m", right? Otherwise, I'd encourage you to ensure any old versions are not on the path, and you might review your path using pathtool just to make sure there are no surprises. It ought to work straightforwardly, afaik.
Cheers
DrBones (view profile)
Sewu (view profile)
I am a long term happy user of panel, so many thanks for providing this. Today fate forced me to finally migrate from MatlabR2013 to R2017. I first discovered my years old "panel" download thus no longer worked. So I downloaded the new version.
Now I get after:
addpath PATH_TO_panel.m
clf
p = panel();
"Cannot redefine class 'panel' without a call to 'clear classes'." Uncomprehendingly writing "clear classes" before the creation of panel also does not help. Is there something obvious causing this?
Thanks for any help.....
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Wouter
No, that doesn't currently work, though it would be easy enough to do it of course.
If that addressing mode is really important to you, you can of course work around by using a loop to construct something like q = {p(1, 1) p(1, 2) p(2, 1) p(2, 2)}...
Cheers
Wouter (view profile)
Question Ben, is it possible to select a panel via a 1D index? For instance,
p = panel();
p.pack(2,2);
p(4).select(); == equal to p(2,2).select(); ?
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Naty
Subplot only does layout. I don't know quite what you mean by "link axes", but you probably want to look to the documentation for axes and figures to find such functionality, not to panel.
Cheers
Naty Shemer (view profile)
Hey Ben,
I have downloaded your toolbox and it looks really good. One thing that bothered me is that I didn't find a way to linkaxes between the different subplots. Is there a way to do that?
Ben Mitch (view profile)
@Ahmad
I haven't tried this, but I suspect what you're seeing is that xabel() and ylabel() will label the current object, to its left and bottom, outside of it, by default. If you want labels that are inside the uipanel, what you are probably looking for is to pack a panel inside it so you can do explicit margin management, something like this:
p = panel(handles.uipanel);
p.pack([]); % this inset panel will be given labels, and have a margin with respect to uipanel
p(1).pack(...); % these are your axis panels, etc.
p(1).xlabel(...)
p(1).ylabel(...)
Sorry for posting this without testing it, I'm on leave right now - if it doesn't solve your problem, do please ask again.
Cheers, Ben
Ben Mitch (view profile)
@Maximilien
What's happening is that colorbar, left to its own devices, does some of its own axis size management, to make size for itself alongside the axis. When you change the margin, panel puts the axis back to the panel-managed size, and the colorbar is left sticking out the side. The margins are handled ccorrectly, but for the axis - the colorbar is not, in your case, managed by panel.
To have the colorbar (which is just another graphics object) managed as part of panel's layout, pack it explicitly:
p(2,i,1,1).pack('h', {.8 []})
p(2,i,1,1,1).select()
p(2,i,1,1,2).select(colorbar)
Ahmad Rusumdar (view profile)
Hi Ben,
Am trying to use this tool to create the one xlabel and ylabel. I created the panel and an axes using GUIDE. I want to have one label for all subplots. As per your previous comment in my opening function i set the p = panel(handles.uipanel), All the time labels are displayed out of the panel. Could you please let me know how to solve with labels?
Regards,
Maximilien Chaumon (view profile)
Hi Ben,
Thanks for your awesome tool.
I have an issue with colorbars. They mess up the margins. Do you have a way to handle them properly?
I copy here my layout without the data
figure(904);clf
p = panel();
p.pack({.2 .8})
p(1).pack('h',[.4 .2 .2 .2])
p(1,1).select()
for i = 1:3
p(1,i+1).select();
end
p(2).pack('h',3)
p(2).de.marginright = 20;
for i = 1:3
p(2,i).pack('v',2)
p(2,i,1).pack('v',{.8 []})
p(2,i,1,1).select()
colorbar
% this is a test colorbar. When it's here and I run the code in debugger, with this colorbar, the next line marginbottom resets the margin somehow.
p(2,i,1,1).marginbottom = 0;
p(2,i,1,2).select()
p(2,i,1,2).margintop = 0;
end
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Stefano, thanks for your feedback :). Try the following to get started...
figure(1)
clf
p = panel();
p.pack(3, 3);
for i = 1:3
for j = 1:3
p(i, j).select();
polar(rand(100, 1));
end
end
stefano recanatesi (view profile)
Hi Ben, thanks for the great toolbox. It is really great.
I need to create a panel with many subpanels that are polaraxes.
The standard matlab way for it is to call subplot(rows,cols,index,polaraxes).
Is there any way to pack a few polaraxes together in your panel toolbox?
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Amit
Thanks for your comments!
Sorry for the pause, this site has done what is so often does, and decided to stop sending me notification emails again.
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that toolbox, but if you send an example script I'll download it and see if I can understand your problem.
Cheers
TestingMatlab (view profile)
Hi Ben - Any workaround to that?
TestingMatlab (view profile)
Hi Ben,
First of all, thanks so much for this tool. It has made my life so easy and I use it to make different panels almost everyday.
I have been using your tool along with GUI Layout Toolbox. I recently used your panel tool with docking/undocking (basically a gui in a panel is undocked/docked into a new/existing figure).
The problem I am facing is that the panel parent changes on doing so and hence it stops working.
Can I somehow re-assign the Panel's parent figure handle to the new figure without destroying its contents?
Thanks once again for this tool.
Best,
Amit
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Matthias
Hmmm... that's annoying. Sorry, I don't have simulink so I haven't seen this behaviour.
The docs that appear in "doc panel" are automatically extracted by Matlab from the comment blocks at the top of each function in panel.m, so to see the docs in a text file, go there. To see them nicely formatted... perhaps Matlab has a function for exporting the docs as HTML? If so, I've not come across it. Please let me know if you figure it out. If you load panel.m in the editor, there may be an export docs function somewhere - the GUI has kind of exploded over the last few years, and I've not kept up.
You'll also find overview/intro docs for panel under /docs, and demos under /demo. That's everything, hopefully in a format you can use.
Cheers
FranticFrog (view profile)
Hello Ben,
first of all, I would like to thank you very much for your tool. It's great.
However I have a problem with the documentation. Unfortunately there is a 'panel' option in Matlabs Simulink - so whenever I try to call 'doc panel' it shows me the reference to
'Simulink.dialog.Panel class'
I have worked around it by calling 'doc panel/panel' and trying to navigate from there and by looking at the code itself, when I was looking for commands.
However this is rather tedious and I was wondering if there is any easy work around or whether I can find the actual documentation 'doc panel' in some other format at some other place. (A simple text file would also do)
Greetings,
Matthias
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Wouter.
You're on the right track. If you
delete(p(1).children);
you only delete the two child panels within p(1), not p(1) itself, which is the row panel. p(1) still takes up space. You want
delete(p(1));
but to see the changes, for a deletion, you also have to issue
p.refresh();
Cheers
Wouter (view profile)
@Ben, it was a Matlab issue. Matlab did change their default coloring of plots. However, I have a new question... I want to delete a row/column of figures. I did read that this is possible with delete(p(1).children). However, how can I make sure that the other plots fill the complete area again which is left by deleting the children...
I have the following snippet.
p = panel();
p.pack(2,2);
p.select('all');
p.identify();
% Delete the first row
delete(p(1).children);
% Now I need a command such that the second row fills the complete area.
rcscott (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Wouter
I can't fathom any reason why Panel would get involved in line coloring. If you can provide a short script that illustrates the problem, I'll find out what's going on.
Cheers, Ben
Wouter (view profile)
Hi Ben,
Question, which color order does Panel use? I noticed that when using Panel, that the first line plot is not blue, but a slightly different darker blue. How do you control this? I tried searching for it in panel.m but I could not find anything.
Thanks in advance.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Maximilien
Sorry, I don't know why I wasn't notified of your post. This bug was fixed by the most recent release, so I suspect you are using an older version. The latest release is 2.12.
Cheers
Maximilien Chaumon (view profile)
Hi,
Thanks for the awesome program.
On my matlab (2014b), the latest version to date issues an error in the display method:
Undefined function 'abs' for input arguments of type 'matlab.ui.Figure'.
Error in num2str (line 66)
xmax = double(max(abs(widthCopy(:))));
Error in panel/display (line 887)
pp = ['attached to Figure ' num2str(p.h_figure)];
Occurs when I do
figure;p = panel()
not if I suppress output with ;
James (view profile)
Sorry - this seems to be a general plotting issue and not related to panel.
Anthony (view profile)
Wonderful; that worked beautifully. So simple! Thank you.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Anthony
I don't use GUIDE, but I would expect Panel to operate correctly in such an environment. For instance, add a uipanel to your GUI and then add the following code at the bottom of the OpeningFcn.
Cheers
--------
% Create a panel
p = panel(handles.uipanel1);
p.pack(2);
p(1).select();
plot(rand(100, 1));
p(2).select();
plot(rand(100, 1));
Anthony (view profile)
Quick question. I can't find this anywhere in your demo files or in the
documentation / matlab exchange page.
Is it possible to display the panel plot in a gui created by GUIDE /
other gui toolboxes? I wish to integrate the panel plot within another
gui window instead of having a separate window pop up. If it is
possible, how would one go about it?
cheers!
cheng joylin (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Anna - Looks like you've fallen victim to the second-post bug on this website; I can't see your original message :). Cheers
Anna (view profile)
Hi Ben,
sorry, forgot to specify the command that generates the error:
p.marginbottom = 15 ;
Thanks!
Anna
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Jonas. Sorry, I don't use github, is that the done thing? I've just uploaded a new release that returns a handle to the accessed graphics object for the xlabel function; using this you can access the object's properties as you intend. Note that for object/axis panels, you can use the default x/y/zlabel functions, as usual. Cheers
Jonas (view profile)
Is it possible, to add latex functionality to panel?
So one could write
p(1).xlabel('($\mum$)','Interpreter','latex')
Jonas (view profile)
Could you upload it to github too?
This website seems to block downloads, for browsers, that block adware and trackers. Thank you.
Jeroen (view profile)
Ben, thanks again. It seems you got further with Mathworks then me, unfortunate that it is a Matlab bug.
As I'm already creating multiple windows if the figure is to be viewed on screen, I'll adapt it such that it also exports to multiple files if necessary. Thanks again for all the help and a great toolbox!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Jeroen
Mathworks have investigated, and identified a similar limit at around 56cm on the width. They didn't exactly identify the source of the issue, but have at least confirmed that it's a limitation with R2014b. Whether they'll act on it, wasn't clear. But it looks like super-large canvases just don't render correctly in R2014b, as suspected.
I'll update if there's anything further from them.
Cheers
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Oh, by the way, if there were a canvas height cap at ten inches, that'd be 25.4 cm, and the symptoms would look a lot like what we're seeing.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Jeroen
Yeah, I've been in touch with mathworks also. And, as with you, their first response was to suggest the same "fix".
Setting "PaperPositionMode" to "auto" amounts to telling Matlab it can ignore the "PaperPosition" setting, so it doesn't "fix" the problem, just eliminates control over the size of the output canvas. You'll find, if you run tests, that the two settings are implicitly linked. If you set "mode" to "auto", "paperpos" will now read an unfamiliar value based on the figure's screen position. Conversely, if you set "paperpos", "mode" will now read "manual". This is all fine, and defined behaviour. If you add that to the script I suggested, therefore, the problem goes away, but not because it's been fixed, but because it's been eliminated. If you add it to panel/export, you'll find you lose control over the output canvas size, and everything goes very wrong.
I've filed a bug report over the incorrect rendering, which I'm fairly sure /is/ a bug, I can't see how it's not. Either way, I'll let you know if it reaches a resolution. If it really is a rendering bug, and it only appears when the canvas height (I haven't looked into width) is greater than 26cm-ish, then very few users are going to encounter it because that makes for a figure that is too large to fit on an A4 sheet once margins are allowed for, so don't expect it to be fixed anytime soon.
One workaround would be to render it in two halves, and then stitch them. This will be easy enough to do with panel. You could also look into whether the same problem occurs if the width is large - if not, you could render the figure as multiple columns, then rearrange it post hoc into your desired form.
Another fix which looks like it ought to work though I've not tried it is just to stay within the 25/26cm height limit. You can cheat the renderer by asking it to render at twice the DPI and half the height, for instance. You would then have to change the size of figure elements, such as fonts and lines, accordingly. Unfortunately, this would include all figure elements - axis boxes, grids, everything, but you could write a script to handle this automatically for all figure elements pre-rendering.
Finally, you could always go back to <R2014b for final rendering, if that fits into your workflow. I know that's the kind of half-arsed non-answer that we all hate, but depending on your setup it may be a practical solution...
Hope that's some help, cheers
Jeroen (view profile)
Hi Ben,
I've been in contact with Matlab and based on your script they suggested to add
'PaperPositionMode','auto' ...
to the settings of gcf. I've looked it up and the default value changed from auto to manual in 2014b. For your snippet, the output seems correct, but when I add the same setting to the export function in panel (on line 1763), the piece of code I gave doesn't work correctly at all.
So I might be doing something wrong in panel, or the functioning of the auto PaperPositionMode changed as well (there is a lot more explanation of that mode in the documentation which wasn't there in the doc for 2014a. Could you maybe help me out a little more here?
Jeroen (view profile)
Thanks again Ben, I've contacted Matlab with the problem and I'll let you know as soon as I know more!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
PS Note that all plot features start to be rendered at incorrect sizes once the output canvas is sufficiently large, so it's not just font sizes, it's a rendering scaler problem of some sort. And you're right, that script below works correctly in R2011b.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Jeroen
Best I can tell, this is a change in rendering behaviour for R2014b, there's no bug in panel. The script below reproduces the same problem - font size not being respected for large exported figures - without using panel. Whether Mathworks would consider this a rendering bug, or defined behaviour, I don't know, but I'd be interested to hear where you get to if you take it up with them.
Cheers, Ben
-----------
figure(1);
clf
plot(randn(100, 1));
ylabel('donkeys', 'fontsize', 8);
for h = 10:2:40
sz_cm = [20 h];
filename = ['test' int2str(h) '.png'];
set(gcf, ...
'PaperUnits', 'centimeters', ...
'PaperOrientation', 'portrait', ...
'PaperPosition', [0 0 sz_cm], ...
'PaperSize', sz_cm ...
);
set(gca, 'pos', [0.2 0 0.7 1]);
print(gcf, ...
'-loose', '-dpng', '-r150', ...
filename);
im = imread(filename);
h = round(size(im, 1)/2);
im = im(h+(-200:200), :, :);
imwrite(im, filename);
disp(filename);
end
Jeroen (view profile)
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the quick response and update!
As I'm doing quite some complex plotting routines, I needed some time to produce a short snippet, but I think I have it now. The code below produces a pdf as expected in 2014a, but not in 2014b.
figure;
p = panel('no-manage-font');
% Plotting all graphs
nrGraphs = 50;
heightGraphs = 10;
for i=1:nrGraphs
p.pack({{heightGraphs}});
p(i).select();
plot([1:100],[1:100]);
ylabel('test');
set(gca,'XTickMode','auto',...
'XTickLabel',[],...
'xgrid','on',...
'FontSize', 8);
set(gca,'ticklength',0*get(gca,'ticklength'));
set(get(gca,'YLabel'), ...
'Rotation', 0,...
'HorizontalAlignment','right',...
'VerticalAlignment','middle', ...
'FontSize', 8, 'FontWeight', 'bold')
end
% Moving and resizing the window
movegui(p.figure(), 'northwest');
scnSize = get(0,'ScreenSize');
set(p.figure(),'outerposition',[scnSize(1) scnSize(2)+50 min(900, scnSize(3)) scnSize(4)-50]);
% Exporting the figure
p.export('test.pdf', ['-h' num2str(nrGraphs*heightGraphs)]);
Ligong Han (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Release 2.11 will appear shortly. Fixes for R2014b, thanks Jeroen. Please let me know if any further issues come up.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Thanks for the heads-up, Jeroen. Uploading update now, which fixes the num2str() issue. I can't reproduce the bug with no-manage-font; when I run demopanelF and export the two resulting plots, they seem to render as expected. If you can pass me a code snippet that reproduces the problem I'll look into it.
Cheers
Jeroen (view profile)
With the update of Matlab 2014b, there have been quite some changes to the graphics systems. Although most functionality still works, there are some functions which do not work as desired. Is there any chance this submission will get an update to work again with the latest releases of Matlab?
So far I've encountered displaying of p or identifying panels does not work anymore (due to the num2str on the figure handle), but for some reason also font size changes are ignored that I made myself (thus with no-manage-fonts) when exporting, which did not happen in 2014a.
Nonetheless, still a great tool for better control over plotting!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Max - margins are respected between panels within their parent and between the root panel and the edges of the canvas (figure or image file) - see doc panel/margin.
Hence, if you set a zero margin for "p", you'll see your child axes butt right up against the figure edge. Their own margins are not respected versus the figure edge.
Cheers
Maximilien Chaumon (view profile)
Hi,
Thanks for your tool.
I'm trying to test it and have a problem, which I think boils down to the following:
figure;p=panel();
p.margin = [0 0 0 0];
p.pack('v',{.35 []});
p(1).margin = [20 20 20 20];
p(1).pack('h',{.4,[]});
p(1,1).show();
p(1,1).select();
p
Which returns:
Parent root: [attached to Figure 27, vert] [ margin 0 0 0 0 mm]
Parent (1): [0.350, hori] [ margin 20 20 20 20 mm]
Object (1,1): [0.400] [ margin 20 20 20 20 mm]
Uncommitted (1,2): [stretch] [ margin 20 20 20 20 mm]
Uncommitted (2): [stretch] [ margin 0 0 0 0 mm]
Why is it that although I set the margins to 20 mm on all sides in p(1) (and I see it in the printed result), it won't show it on the displayed axes ?
Many thanks for your help.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Andrea
Sounds like you may be being tripped up by the fact that "colormap" is a property of a figure, not an axis. This is not related to panel.
I can't grok the code you posted, but the way out of this problem is usually to use RGB images rather than indexed images. If you plot "image(rand(30,30,3))" you will notice that the resulting image does not change if you change the colormap.
Cheers
Andrea (view profile)
Hi! First, english is not my language, if you have problem to understand me, please, don't worry, you can advise me.
I love your panel.m, but i have problem to manage some function.
I have to plot several graphic, and each graphic use pcolor. The problem is linked to the fact that the final cmap will be extend to the other graphic, what can i do to avoid this problem?
This is my code:
p=panel();%Creoil pannello
% p.title(p,['Time = ', num2str(Time/1e6/365.25/86400),' Ma'])
%Creo due svbvanneli, il primo contenente i P-T-t, il secondo Vis, viz
p.pack('v',[1/2 1/2] )
p(1).pack(1,2);
p(2).pack(1,2);
p(1,1,1).select()
fmap=lines;
for j=1:num_points
T=markt';% Per visualizzare i dati in modo più liscio, è necessario usare fnplt2 in associazione con cscvn, per utilizzare quest'ultima è necessario trasporre i dati di P-T-t
P=markp';
%if i<=5
fnplt2(cscvn([T(j,1:i); P(j,1:i)]),fmap(j,:),2.0);
C1=lines(num_points);
s=50;
Ta=markt(q,1:num_points);
Pa=markp(q,1:num_points);
scatter(Ta,Pa,s,C1,'d','fill','MarkerEdgeColor','k','LineWidth',1.5)
axis ([0 700 0 10])
xlabel ('Temperature')
ylabel ('Pressure')
title ('P-T-t path')
hold all
end
%% Compos1zione
p(1,1,2).select()
step2=1;
% if temp
% [c,h]=contour(x_vec_t,z_vec_t,ColorGrid_t,100:200:2300,'r','LineWidth',0.5);
% end
pcolor(x_vec./1000,z_vec./1000,ColorGrid);
shading interp
if spec == 'c'
colormap(C_map);
caxis ([0 99])
else
colormap(jet);
if cmod
caxis ([cmin cmax])
end
colorbar
end
axis ij image
hold all
s=50;
% x=markx(q,2);
% z=marky(q,2);
xa=markx(q,:);
za=marky(q,:);
x=xa./1000;
z=za./1000;
xlenght=size(x);
C=lines(20);
scatter(x,z,s,C,'d','fill','MarkerEdgeColor','k','LineWidth',1.5)
hold off
if temp1
hold on
[c,h]=contour(x_vec_t./1000,z_vec_t./1000,ColorGrid_t,[100:200:2700],'k','LineWidth',0.5);
clabel(c,h,'Color','w');
axis ij image
hold off
end
xlabel('X Width in km')
ylabel('Z Depth in km')
title(['Time = ',num2str(Time/1e6/365.25/86400),' Ma'])
h=select('colormap')
%% Viz
% plotting
p(2,1,2).select();
if temp
v=100:100:2500;
[c,h]=contour(gx,gy,vizmat_t,v,'w','LineWidth',0.5);
end
if logmod
if(strcmp(viztype,'pr'))
for m=1:ynum
for n=1:xnum
if abs(vizmat (m,n)) < 1
vizmat (m,n)=0;
else
vizmat (m,n)= sign(vizmat(m,n))*log10(abs(vizmat(m,n)));
end
end
end
else
vizmat = sign(vizmat).*log10(abs(vizmat));
end
end
pcolor(gx,gy,vizmat);
shading interp
colormap(jet);
if cmod
caxis([cmin cmax])
end
colorbar
axis ij image
axis([gx(1) gx(end) gy(1) gy(end)])
[...]
I'm principiant... i know, i hope you will give me an answer, have a nice day, see you
Gautam Dey (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
If a function does not return a handle, you can usually recover it by walking the figure tree - start with get(gcf, 'children'), and work from there. Not elegant, but...
Ian (view profile)
Thanks for the ideas Ben, not all the functions return handles :-(, but for those that do your idea is that I let the external function create the axes "free", then set up my panels, then use .select(axis_handle) to capture the axis into the correct panel -- I hadn't thought of it that way as I normally always select() before I plot. Will give this a go when I get time. Thanks again for a such a useful utility!!!
p.s. and yes the various website bugs on FEX are annoying, I normally copy my text before submitting just in case here...
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Oh, and brilliant. I've come a cropper by this website's daft bug of eating your 1st post if you post twice. Again. I wish they'd fix that.
I'll not post it all again, the essence of it was:
1) I could imagine adding a flag to panel so that it would respect the existing layout of some set of select()ed objects, and reflect it when it does layout. However, I'd implement it by creating child panels with absolute positioning, so...
2) Why is what you are wanting to do difficult to do using absolute positioning, applied manually, thus?
% axis handles from toolbox X
h1 = ...; h2 = ...;
% pack into a panel
p.pack({[0 0 1 0.45], [0 0.55 1 0.45]};
p(1).select(h1);
p(2).select(h2);
Cheers
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Oh, it just strikes me, this isn't a misunderstanding is it? I mean, obviously panel lives and breathes "non-overlapping". This situation is different, right? Sorry, just realised that I can read your original post in more than one way.
Cheers
Ian (view profile)
My problem is that I have a several functions from a large toolbox that plots 2 axes, one above the other into a figure. I need to use their function *unaltered*, but want the output (2 axes, non overlapping) into 1 panel (relatively positioned). Whenever I select() or resize, panel then sets the positions of both *axes* within the panel to the same values (overlapping). If I could rewrite their functions I could use panel for layout but I'm trying to avoid shadowing lots of code in their toolbox... I think select() always calls recomputeLayout() which assumes the child axes should fill the panel (as in demopanelG). Cheers!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi - as often happens, the site has stopped sending me notifys when people comment, so I've not seen these comments, sorry. Thankyou for the nice feedback.
@Ian - If they are non-overlapping, I suggest you use absolute positioning instead, see demopanel6. Is that what you need?
Cheers
Ian (view profile)
Hi Ben, another feature request: In demopanelG you show two axes being passed into select(). At the moment these axes have the same 'Position' property. Often one may want to position an axis over another, and using select() on these loses the position of each axes, forcing them to overlap. It would be great if we could pass in axes to be managed by a panel that may have non-overlapping positions.
Jim (view profile)
Amazing work Ben, thank you for sharing. Tried many other approaches for altering how Matlab displays plots and yours is certainly the most exhaustive and well thought out. Allowed me display my data exactly how I wanted, saved me a lot of time!
Ratman (view profile)
Hi Mitch, cheese!
Henrik (view profile)
Joel (view profile)
Works like a charm, thanks!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Joel, thanks for the comments.
In answer, I don't generally use panel like that (rather, I mod the script and run it from scratch again), but it can be done if you prefer messing around at the command line. As I say, this is relatively untested because I don't use it, so ymmv.
I think if you delete a child panel, everything behaves, and you can call delete on an array of panels. So, in your example, try:
delete(p(1).children); % p(1).reset()
p(1).pack(2, 2);
cheers
Joel (view profile)
Hi Ben!
I'm wondering if there is a way to reset a panel.
Something that works like this:
p = panel;
p.pack(2);
p(1).pack(2);
p(1,2).select();
plot([1 2], [1 2])
p(1).reset();
p(1).pack(2,2);
Tanks!
Anna (view profile)
Thanks, working great now. Thanks for your help and thanks again for such a helpful tool!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Anna, thanks for your comments :).
"annotation" is adamant throughout its help that it works in "normalized figure units" so I would have thought that's that. except, if you create one, and then change its "parent" property to an axis, lo and behold it becomes locked to the axis rather than the figure. out of date docs? perhaps. a google on "matlab annotation axis" turns up this solution elsewhere, too, btw.
h = annotation(...);
set(h, 'parent', gca);
in the interests of full disclosure, your workaround could be made to work with panel (were it still necessary). the way to do it would be to get panel to notify you when the layout is changed. do:
p.setCallback(@myfunc, 'mydata');
and the function "myfunc" will get a call every time the layout changes under "p". this is what I'd have suggested if the axis/parent solution hadn't worked.
cheers
Anna (view profile)
Hi, thanks for a great tool! A quick newbie Q... I'm having trouble adding a custom legend to one of my panels. Positioning text labels is easy using 'unit' 'normalized' to position within the current panel. But 'annotation' (for adding lines, box etc) seems to only position things with reference to the entire figure window. Am I missing something? I've tried a workaround using p(1,1).select(); axesPosition = get(gca, 'Position'); but it's not ideal because of subsequent changes to panel positions in my code. Is there a way to reference both text and annotation positions to the current panel (either data units or normalised to axes?). Any advice would be appreciated!
Fedor (view profile)
Thanks for a very useful tool!
Kazumasa (view profile)
thanks Ben, how fast you get an idea to implement the suggestion! Then I'll look forward to the future release. Thanks again!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Kazumasa
thanks for your comments. save panel management with figure... is a great idea. you'd have to walk the graphics object tree and store associations as references rather than handles, then reassociate on load. little bit of work in there, so I can't do it immediately, but I'll put it on the to-do list for the next version. thanks for the suggestion :).
cheers
Kazumasa (view profile)
Hello Ben,
thanks a lot for the great contribution!
I'm wondering if there is a way to save a panel-managed figure with the associated panel variable, so that I can load the figure later and handle it by the panel functions. If it's possible, panel will be really something indispensable to me..!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Frank
I can't fathom how that would be related to the problem you outlined, and panel works fine with the latex interpreter, afaik. but there you go, computers are like that sometimes - glad you got it sorted, anyway :).
cheers
Frank (view profile)
hi Ben,
I have finally found the mistake.
In a different figure I have
set(0,'defaulttextinterpreter','latex');
and panel does not seem to like that.
As soon as I declare tex as default it all works. Thanks again.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Frank
your revised code works fine here (R2011b/win64), so it seems that the problem is either specific to your environment or to your matlab version. which version/OS are you using?
I don't know what "produces one empty bar graph" means, I'm afraid. where in the figure? what does "empty" mean? one possibility is that the first axis is getting destroyed when you create the second. another is that the first axis is ending up with the second bar3 in it. could you post a figure?
in any case, the two functions bar/bar3 should produce the same gross behaviour, so either there's a bug in the version you have, or - and this is always worth checking - you are using a non-standard bar or bar3. check the output of "which bar" and "which bar3": they should both be under "specgraph". what is probably happening - for whatever reason - is some confusion over the "current axis". sprinkle the gca command around to find out what's going on.
cheers
Frank (view profile)
Hi Ben, thanks for the answer.
What I mean is that my code
%%
p = panel;
p.pack(1,3);
a=rand(3);
p(1,1).select();
bar3(a);
hold;
p(1,2).select();
bar3(a);
%%
produces one empty bar graph, while
%%
p = panel;
p.pack(1,3);
a=rand(3);
p(1,1).select();
bar3(a);
hold;
p(1,2).select();
bar(a);
%%
correctly produces one bar3 and one bar graph.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Frank
your code line "p = p.pack(1,3)" does not work, I've changed it for "p = panel; p.pack(1,3)". with that change, your code works fine here.
you said it "fail"s for you, but you don't say how.
cheers
Frank (view profile)
I want several 3D bar graphs is my plot but can't get it to work. An example is below.
If I replace the second bar3(a) with plot(a) or even bar(a), then it produces proper output.
But any graph containing bar3 twice seems to fail and I don't understand why.
p=p.pack(1,3);
a=rand(3);
p(1,1).select();
bar3(a);
hold;
p(1,2).select();
bar3(a);
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Jerry
yeah, I suppose it could do something like try and squeeze things in by default, but it doesn't do anything like that at the moment. perhaps version 3 :).
incidentally - you know that the msg is only a warning, not an error. if you maximize the window, the panels will probably get rendered correctly. certainly they will if you adjust the margin. it just means "can't render the panel under the current conditions".
cheers
Jerry Gregoire (view profile)
If the default margin is not changed and too many plots are requested then it issues: Warning: a panel had zero size, and the managed object was hidden. It should accommodate with smaller subplots like subplot does.
Here is an example:
%Works - >
p = panel();
p.pack('h', {0.50, 0.50});
p(2).pack({0.50 []})
p(2,1).pack(3,4)
p(2,2).pack(2,2)
p.select('all')
% Change p(2,1) -> Will not work
p = panel();
p.pack('h', {0.50, 0.50});
p(2).pack({0.50 []})
p(2,1).pack(4,4)
p(2,2).pack(2,2)
p.select('all')
% Change default margin -> Works again
p = panel();
p.pack('h', {0.50, 0.50});
p(2).pack({0.50 []})
p(2,1).pack(4,4)
p(2,2).pack(2,2)
p.de.margin = 1;
p.select('all')
Other than that gotcha, I like it.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi - thanks for posting that info. I guess that function appeared in a later version.
Cheers
J (view profile)
I was able to find the source for isrow() on the matlab central file exchange. Just google it and the matlab central file exchange. Then save it as a new function in a your path.
J (view profile)
I am using MATLAB 7.10.0 (R2010a), and I am getting this error: Undefined function or method 'isrow' for input arguments of type 'cell'
Is there anyway to fix this?
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Opher
Thanks for your comments. This is because "margin" is an inherited property, so all subplots will get the value you have chosen. See demopanel9 for a well commented example of how to set margins.
In any case, what you want is something like:
% default margin everywhere
p.fa.margin = 2;
% specific root margin
p.margin = [5 5 15 15];
% other specific margins
...
cheers
Opher Donchin (view profile)
Thanks for this. It seems very throughly thought through.
One question: when I use margin on the root:
p = panel();
p.pack(3,4);
p.margin = [5 5 15 15];
I get an effect on the subplots instead of on the root. How do I get an effect on the root?
Jaekyun (view profile)
Nice work and demos :)
Muthu Annamalai (view profile)
Nice looking panels.
Alex (view profile)
Iman Ansari (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Release 2.10 will appear shortly. This release is significant, since the optimisation approach to layout has been replaced by a procedural approach. This should mean no more poor performance for users without the optimisation toolbox (Per Nordlöw, I hope this helps you at least :D). The 'defer' flag should now be obsolete (it will continue to be supported).
This release also adds support for panels of fixed physical size, which obviates the need for the inelegant workaround suggested in the comments below. see the new "help panel/pack" for details. This has led to a change of recommended syntax to the pack() function, as follows:
OLD: p.pack([0.2 0.3 -1])
NEW: p.pack({0.2 0.3 []})
The old syntax is still supported, and there are no plans to withdraw support, but new code should use the new syntax (swap -1 for [], and [] for {}). To pack a panel of fixed physical size, simply enclose your size in a cell array, for example:
p.pack({0.2 {50} []})
NB: This is a fairly major rework - mission critical users (ha!) might stick with 2.9 until June, in case of any issues.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
PS. I've added this to a nascent FAQ, since it's been asked twice :)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Bahaa
Thanks for your comments. The workaround for semilogx() etc. is covered further down this page.
Cheers
Ben
Bahaa (view profile)
Hi Ben,
this is an amazing work ... thank you for sharing.
I have one comment on it ... when using 'semilogx' or 'loglog' for plotting in the selected panel. the plot axis remains in linear scale... is there a way to change it to be in log scale.
regards,
Bahaa
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Release 2.9 will appear shortly. Only minor updates, no need to upgrade. Release log has details.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Release 2.8 will appear shortly. panel.plot() is withdrawn, and replaced by panel.fixdash(), which simplifies use and improves performance. See demopanelI (the updated version) for suggested usage. It's pretty neat, now, actually, do please try it out and let me know what you think :).
Ahmed A. Selman (view profile)
Very nice function, elegantly written.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Release 2.7 will appear shortly. It adds a demonstration of how to do inset plots (tx Ann Hickox), but more interestingly adds panel.plot(), an integrated function for plotting dashed and dotted lines that works around the poor rendering of these in bitmap exported images.
NB: In this release, setCallback() is renamed to addCallback(), to support the new plot() function - if you use setCallback() you will need to search/replace.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Elliot
Firstly, the answer is inelegant, and it would be nice if Panel offered packing at a fixed size rather than only at relative size. Perhaps in a future version. However, you can work around as follows (and yes, the callback was the right idea). First, you'll have to edit panel.m itself to allow yourself access to the "packpos" property, add these lines:
case 'packpos'
out = p.packpos;
round about line 2289, just under case 'figure'. Restart Matlab. Now, the key features you need are:
1) attach the callback to "p", the root panel. this is a bit more intuitive, though you can achieve the same thing your way too.
2) access p in the callback through "p = data.panel". then you have p.figure, p(2).object (which is "u2"), get(p(2).object, 'children') (which is "tab"), etc.
Now, calculate the correct packing size for p(2), check if it's the current packing size (i.e. check if it's equal to p(2).packpos) and, if not, p(2).repack() it.
Phew, what a pain. Works, though. So yeah, one item on the to-do list for next version is to allow fixed size packing.
The full code is at goo.gl/A1vnu and it's not something I'm proud of.
Cheers
Ben
Elliot (view profile)
I'm having a little trouble setting up the layout I want, that includes a plot above and a data table below. The two main goals are:
1. Let the plot take up as much space as possible without cutting off any of the table
2. When the window is resized, resize the plot but leave the height of the table fixed.
Below is what I have so far, but I have to fudge the height of the table, and the resizing doesn't work because I don't know how to access the properties of my uipanel and uitable from inside a callback function.
Can anyone please provide some guidance?
-----------------
% Create some data and a table
X = randn(100,3);
tableData = [mean(X,1); std(X,[],1)];
% Set up the figure
clf
set(f, 'units', 'normalized');
% Create the uipanels
u1 = uipanel('units', 'normalized', 'position', [0 0 1 1], 'backgroundcolor', [1 1 1]);
u2 = uipanel();
% Create the uitable and get the relevant sizes
tab = uitable('Parent', u2, 'Data', tableData, 'units', 'normalized', 'position', [0 0 1 1]);
pos = get(u2, 'position');
ext = get(tab, 'extent');
set(u2, 'position', [pos(1:3) ext(4)]);
% Set up the panel
p = panel(u1);
p.margin = [5 5 5 5];
% Pack two subpanels, with the bottom panel's height fixed (to hold the
% uitable)
% Can I automatically account for the margins without having to add a
% buffer like this?
p.pack([-1 ext(4)+0.02]);
% Add the plot
p(1).select();
plot(X);
% Add u2
p(2).select(u2);
% Get rid of the scrollbars
jtab = findjobj(tab);
set(jtab, 'VerticalScrollBarPolicy', 21);
set(jtab, 'HorizontalScrollBarPolicy', 31);
% If I set up a call back, how do I access the position of u2 and the
% extent of tab from the 'data' argument?
%p(2).setCallback(@callbacktest);
Pio Nonus (view profile)
Thanks. It works perfectly.
christhechris (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Tim - thanks for the feedback :)
Yes, indeed, that will work, as will any of the other things you can do with figures (at least, I hope so). Panel should interact well with anything else you want to do with a figure, so please let me know if there are any compatibility problems.
Cheers
Tim (view profile)
Ben - Great submission!
using;
figure('units','normalized','outerposition',[0 0 1 1])
rather than the usual figure command makes the created figure full screen. Thanks.
farhan (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Kate - not sure, probably. I've not used copyobj before. If you figure it out, please send me a demo for the collection :)
cheers
Kate (view profile)
Is it possible to open a saved figure, then insert everything in that figure into a subplot of a Panel? Similar to what is possible using copyobj and subplot. I did not see a relevant demo, but perhaps I just missed it? Thanks for any pointers!
Wyllian (view profile)
Very powerfull tool. Suitable for graphics professionals.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
...and Release 2.6, now available, also adds export to SVG and includes a documentation update.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
info: the release on 23 Jul 2012 is unlabelled, but is Release 2.5.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Kuo-Hsien
think you're probably trying to do this...? in terms of layout:
p = panel();
p.pack(2);
p(2).pack('h', 2);
that is - rather than including those scalar dimensions, use 'h' to switch to horizontal packing for the second pack command. the way you had it does work just fine, but it makes the references rather complex (e.g. p(2,1,1,1)). try p.select('all'), p.identify(), to see what you've ended up with.
next, to make what is now p(2,1) packed at 2/3, you should change the last line to:
p(2).pack('h', [2/3 -1]);
note that -1 means "stretch to fit". see demopanel4 for a full example.
hope that helps
cheers, ben
Kuo-Hsien (view profile)
How to let p(2,1,1) occupy 2/3 of the area of p(2, 1).pack(1, 2) ??
Here is my code:
p = panel();
p.pack(2, 1);
p(2, 1).pack(1, 2);
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Brendan - see release 2.5 for management of multiple axes (see demopanelG).
Please note that this release (2.5) may, possibly, have bugs, after this rather significant change - please revert to 2.4 if you have problems, and report them here. Thanks :)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Glad it's a help to you, Karl, thanks for the comments :)
Karl (view profile)
Great function. Super-useful-- I may never have to touch up another figure in Illustrator. Incredibly well documented, and the demos are invaluable.
Karl (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Brendan-
I've had a look through, and it looks like it will be possible to manage two or more axes per panel, no problem. However, it's going to take a little time to go through step by step and try not to make any bugs, so I'll have to do this another time. I will try and get to it next week.
cheers, ben
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Dan-
I've tracked this down, now. Panel sets the "NextPlot" property of automatically created axes to "replacechildren", whereas the default is "replace". This is to protect modifications to axis labelling due to panel (i.e. fonts, i think). A side effect is that the high-level plotting functions semilogx/semilogy do not change the scale of the axis. It doesn't look like there's any way to control these things separately, so I guess we're stuck with that. However, it suggests an alternative way round the problem to that which I suggested, above. You can use the following to create the axis before asking panel to manage it - the effect is that the axis gets created with the appropriate scale, and then gets handed to panel for position and font management. either approach ends up with the same result, so whichever you find more intuitive.
cheers, ben
---
>> figure; p = panel;
>> semilogy(x,y,'r','linewidth',2.5);
>> p.select(gca);
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Jesper
I don't know if it's related to the EPS thing...
google "matlab export dashed eps"
In any case, I doubt it's related to panel. panel uses "print" to export, so try using the print function directly and see how that goes. get back to me if it does seem to be panel-related.
cheers
ps. you might try a different renderer on the figure, see if that helps. each of the renderers has something it doesn't do well, though.
Jesper (view profile)
Hi, I have a problem, when exporting figures with dashed or dotted lines. They almost appear as solid lines when I use -rh and -rp resolution. Is there a solution? Rendering?
Thanks
Ben Mitch (view profile)
this comments page is really annoying, the way it swallows questions! i've just noticed that my answer to Eric was swallowed too. d'oh.
Eric - the brief answer is that when you set p(1).de.margintop to 50, you're setting all p(1) (the left column) 's descendants to a 50mm top margin, for a total 250mm of margin to be found in the vertical dimension. this is unlikely to fit on your screen, hence the warning and the hidden panels. perhaps you are looking to set just the topmargin of p(1), i.e. p(1).margintop = 50?
cheers
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Brendan - your question seems to have disappeared. I'll briefly answer it anyway - since ax1 is managed and ax2 is not, they will get out of sync whenever the window is resized (in your example, they may never be sized, because you use 'defer' but do not make a call to refresh() at the end). it would be nice, i suppose, if panel managed both ax1 and ax2. i'll look into this when i get back from travelling, it should be easy, and will post a new version probably (in about a week). in the meantime, you can always use set(ax2, 'position', get(ax1, 'position')) to re-sync the two axes, but that's not a viable solution for exporting. thanks for picking that up, i think that will be a useful fix.
cheers
Brendan Sullivan (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
(note that that last example, p(1).rightmargin, is specific to the layout used in demopanel6, i.e. two columns, rather than being a general rule!)
Eric Bryant (view profile)
Ben, thanks very much for this contribution. There are a couple of things I don't understand about margins, however. For example:
>> demopanel6
>> p(1).de.margintop=50;
Warning: a panel had zero size, and the managed object was hidden ...
>> p(1).de.margintop=0;
>> p(2).de.margintop=50;
[No warning]
Looked at your documentation. Again, much appreciated,
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Dan, thanks for the comments. I'm not sure quite why a panel axis does not respond to semilogy as it should, I'll look into it if it ever needs a broader update. In any case, semilogy() just sets the value "yscale", so you can use:
plot(x, y, etc.)
set(gca, 'yscale', 'log')
I think that amounts to the same thing.
Cheers
Dan (view profile)
Ben, great code and thanks for providing. I've been using it a lot lately. I'm trying to use the semilogy function in one of my panels, but the figure then just shows a normal y-axis. Here is sample code:
semilogy(x,y,'r','linewidth',2.5)
Is there a way to use semilogy with panel.m?
Thanks,
Dan
Derek Nokes (view profile)
Thanks Ben!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Derek
see demopanel4, or try the following:
p = panel();
p.pack([70 30], [80 20]);
p(1, 1).select(); plot(y1);
p(1, 2).select(); plot(y2);
...
that should put you in the same space,
cheers
ben
Derek Nokes (view profile)
In a previous version of panel I used to do something like this:
p = panel(gcf, [2 2], [70 30],[80 20]);
select(p{1}); plot(y1)
select(p{2}); plot(y2)
select(p{3}); hist(y1,100)
select(p{4}); hist(y2,100)
How do I do something simple like this in the newest version of panel?
Derek Nokes (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Per
i) if you have the opt toolbox installed, now:
on my machine linprog takes about 80ms for demopanel1. if your linprog is taking 1 sec, and it's the mathworks version, i guess that's just a cost to using LP to do the layout. i might try and optimise the definition of the problem at some point, but i'm not sure if it's possible, i think i tried that last year.
ii) if you don't:
the included linprog solver isn't optimised, and runs slow. if you can track down a faster, freely available, solver, i'd gladly trial it for inclusion in a future release.
on my machine, demopanel1 takes 1.25s. of this, 0.45s is the plotting code. once this is snipped out, most of the rest is sluggish property referencing and function nesting, which is frankly embarassing, but i'm afraid i just don't have time right now to work on optimising this (maybe in april :)). to be fair, demopanel1 is a complex layout; in my everyday use (one to six panels in a grid, say), i don't notice any overhead. but as ever - your mileage may vary.
cheers
Per Nordlöw (view profile)
The performance is still close to unacceptable to me. Running demopanel1.m takes 1.8 seconds out of which 1 second for the linprog code. Why so long? I'm sitting on a pretty descent laptop, Dual-Core 4 Gb memory, DELL PRECISION M6400 with MATLAB 2011b.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
A note: On 2008b, and possibly later versions I haven't tested, the fact that the resizeCallback() and closeCallback() are private makes things not work. You can fix this by removing the "Access = Private" modifier on that section of "methods". It works fine in later versions, they must have changed the access rules I guess.
Imran (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
[edited email exchange with "Steffen"]
>> I was wondering: Is it possible to set the background color of the exported figure? I tried
>>
>> set(gcf,'Color',[0,0,0])
>>
>> In the matlab window the background is black. But after p.export the background is white again.
>>
>> What am I doing wrong :?
> set(gcf, 'Color', [0 0 0], 'InvertHardcopy', 'off')
>
> cheers
> ben
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Jesper
Forgive me, I was just using Panel myself today and noticed strange behaviour with respect to smoothing and import into Word. Suddenly clicked that I was seeing what you were flagging up the other day. Sorry, I did do some testing before and thought I'd got to the bottom of what you were seeing. Clearly, not - but I understand now :).
This is fixed now for PNG and TIF filetypes which now import correctly whether smoothed or not. Looks like JPEG does not include a DPI setting at all, or at least not one that I can make work. JPEG's not very useful, here, anyway. Next release of Panel will include the fix.
Thanks for the heads up :)
Ben
Mukhtar Ullah (view profile)
Thanks Ben. That is the kind of an answer I was expecting. I had this wrong perception that I can only access methods from an instance p, but you saved me!
Best regards
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Mukhtar, did you try...
p = panel.recover(gcf);
?
Cheers
Mukhtar Ullah (view profile)
Sorry, I forgot one line. Following is the correct code I use
cvars = who;
foundpanel = false;
for i=1:numel(cvars)
try
foundpanel = evalin('base', ['isa(' cvars{i} ',''panel'')']);
catch erri
end
if foundpanel
break;
end
end
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Jesper
Yeah, that's right. By scaling it you're overriding the default DPI either set in the file or assumed by Word.
Some image formats can include a resolution setting (TIFF, PNG, also JPEG?). However, these settings don't propagate to the image file through Matlab's print() function (at least, not to my testing). Panel does not attempt to fix up this information after print() is called because, well, because you're the first person who's flagged it up :). I use Latex for documents, which ignores image DPI, so I'd not noticed.
Erm... It would require either binary hacking or a time-consuming imread()/imwrite() cycle, I guess, to fix it. And Matlab's imwrite() appears not to provide access to these fields for JPEGs. Potentially this could be done, would it make a big difference to you? In any case, I won't prioritise it since the scaling is easy enough.
If you're using PNG (looks like it), you could add it yourself as a read/write step after p.export(), something like:
function set_png_dpi(filename, dpi)
im = imread(filename);
dpm = dpi / 25.4 * 1000;
imwrite(im, filename, ...
'XResolution', dpm, ...
'YResolution', dpm, ...
'ResolutionUnit', 'meter');
Inefficient as hell, but would do what you want. If anyone has a smarter solution, I'll gladly consider adding it to Panel.
Cheers
Ben
Jesper (view profile)
Thanks Ben, I get 4016x2482 in both cases. But the un-smoothed figure fits directly into a A4 Word document, while the smoothed one needs to be down-scaled to fit...
Cheers
-Jesper
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Jesper - thanks for your feedback.
That command produces an image size of 4019 by 2486 pixels on my machine. Without the smoothing, i.e. '-rp', it is 4019 by 2487 (i.e. only one pixel different). What sizes do you get?
Note that this is "170x105mm" only in the sense that, if you print/display that bitmap file at 600 DPI (as chosen by "p"), it will be 170x105mm in size, and the fonts, lines and symbols in the image will be at the point sizes you used when you created them. That meta-information (600 DPI) is _not_ encoded in the image file, as it can be, I believe, in a jpeg file. Thus, if you open it in something like photoshop, you may be surprised at the size it is displayed at, but that is only a matter of zoom level.
Hope that helps
Ben
Jesper (view profile)
Hey, this seems to be quite good! But I have a problem with exporting.
I was expecting a 170x105mm figure with:
p.export('myfig' '-rp/2')
But it turns out to be much bigger. Without the smoothing it is as expected. Am I missing something?
Mukhtar Ullah (view profile)
Thanks Ben Mitch for the update. I hope others find that useful too.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Have just uploaded a new version (2.2) with the flag you need, Mukhtar. Cheers.
Mukhtar Ullah (view profile)
Mukhtar Ullah (view profile)
Dear Ben, thank you for a prompt reply. Commenting out those lines does solve the problem as you guessed. Yes, it would be useful if you add that flag. The reason I need to use different fonts for different text objects is because text objects having math formulas are better in a roman font instead of the default Arial which only suits pure text only.
Cheers,
Mukhtar
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Mukhtar. Thanks for your comments.
Yes, Panel handles fonts (face, size) globally for each panel layout. So, whenever you do anything that causes the panel layout to be re-rendered (e.g. change a margin on a panel for which redrawing is not deferred, as in your case), all fonts of all managed objects will be set back to the default for the layout. It didn't cross my mind that somebody might want to use different fonts for different objects, I'm afraid. Now... what to do about it.
One way would be to provide another flag to the constructor, to turn off font management for that layout, so that the user can do it themselves (fonts would revert to being managed by Matlab, and you could do what you are trying to do). You could trial this by commenting out lines 3010 to 3015 (assuming you are using version 2.1). Does this then do what you want? If so, I'll add this flag and publish a new version.
Cheers
Ben
Mukhtar Ullah (view profile)
Dear Ben Mitch, this problem is arising again and I think I found the reason why. It depends on whether you set panel margins before or after plotting. So wheraas the following works
p = panel();p.pack(2, 2);
p.de.margin = 2;
p(1).marginbottom = 10;
p.margin = [10 8 2 8];
% your plotting commands some of which % change the fontname property
But the following will give you the problem:
p = panel();p.pack(2, 2);
% your plotting commands some of which % change the fontname property
p.de.margin = 2;
p(1).marginbottom = 10;
p.margin = [10 8 2 8];
It is driving my nerves crazy. Would be nice if you could fix this. Thanks.
Mukhtar Ullah (view profile)
I have to take my comment back. The culprit was another piece of code.
Mukhtar Ullah (view profile)
This function is very useful. One thing, however, could be fixed by the author: it does not respect font specification on an individual basis. Though it is possible to specify a global FontName property, it does not respect the specification for a particular text object. For example, the following will not give the expected result:
xlabel('X(t)', 'FontName', 'Times-Roman');
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Per. Yes, it's slow without the opt toolbox installed, unfortunately. At some point I may find time to incorporate a fast solver for the layout; until then this will be a problem for complex layouts without that toolbox. If you are using panel for producing final figures, you can use the "defer" argument (see "doc panel/panel"), and the layout will only be computed when you call export. Not ideal, I know.
For the padding (margins), have you looked through the examples in the docs? Particularly, see "demopanel5". Or, try "p.de.margin = 0" as a starting point, then increase margins on individual panels or parent panels until you get the layout you need.
Hope that helps.
Per Nordlöw (view profile)
Idea is good. However, for some reason the performance becomes unusable bad for grids containing around 20 axeses. I have to around 10 seconds for a redraw. I do not have Opt Toolbox installed. I'm using Linux and HW OpenGL on an Nvidia-equipped Dell Precision M6400. I also find it hard to pad axeses grids in an optimal way so that titles and labels are displayed without covering each other. If these things are fixed I will rate this as a five-star product.
georg (view profile)
one of my posts got lost, that's why the last message doesn't make sense ... anyway, everything is working now
georg (view profile)
sorry, I was wrong. I was just wondering how you did the recover after the figure was closed, so I stumbled upon the persistent variables and the mlock call. But the mlock isn't in the dispatcher anyway, so that has got nothing to do with it ...
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi georg, i've looked into this. the long and short is, if you call "clf" whilst a panel is managing the figure, you pull out the rug from under panel, and there's no way i can see to detect this. i've updated the code so that the resulting "invalid handle" errors are hidden, rendering this condition harmless, but still it seems that calling "clf" in this way is not the "right" thing to do. do any of these alternatives suit you?
1) if you want to build a fresh set of panels from scratch, just do so (call "p=panel" to create the root). any existing panels will be deleted automatically (though see "demopanelE").
2) if you want to clear the figure and plot into it again without using panel, use "delete(p)", where "p" is your root panel. the figure is now clear of any panels and panel axes. if you left some other stuff in there, you can call "clf" afterwards to clean this up.
let me know if these alternatives make sense. i can see that the expected behaviour on clf would be to delete all associated panels, as well as all graphics handle objects. i wonder if there is any way to do it, though. if anyone knows a way to detect a call to clf, please do pass it on.
regards
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi georg. yeah you're right, there's something up there. it is supposed to disengage itself following a clf call; i must have been messing around and left things untidy. i'll look into it when i get a chance. cheers.
georg (view profile)
Great! love it, especially the print functionality. Though, I think there is a problem with the delete function. I keep getting errors in case I use clf and reset the Figure position afterwards. (I am trying to reuse the same figure multiple times but have different numbers of subplots in it.) Suggestion: either provide a panel.clf() function or unregister the callback functions from the parent handle (and anything else that my belong to the panel)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
hi Warwick - i think this must be a problem with your local "linprog", since the one provided with panel is not named the same. try "which linprog" or "edit linprog" to see what it resolves to, and delete it or move it as necessary. panel should then start working.
georg (view profile)
Warwick (view profile)
Trying to run demopanel1, etc.
keep getting error.
"Error: File: linprog.m Line: 27 Column: 4
A BREAK statement appeared outside of a loop. Use RETURN instead."
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Ian - Sorry, I haven't had time to look at this. In the meantime, you can make this call to disable the layout process following a resize:
set(p.figure, 'ResizeFcn', [])
Technically a hack, but I can't think why it would cause any side effects. Cheers.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Stewart - extract it anywhere, and just add the file "panel.m" to your Matlab path (using "addpath", or "pathtool"). Cheers
Stewart Wiseman (view profile)
Newbie question! I downloaded Panel, where do I extract it to? Thanks..
Ian (view profile)
I remove all space and ticks and thus 15x15 actually works well on a decent monitor! 15x15 is probably an upper limit though (more because it takes ages to record data from large matrices) :-P
Yes, I do resize a lot - I use Matlab as an online display for data coming in from neuronal recordings, and resize given other programs and the size of the current data grid. Again, if it remains slow, I'll just know *not* to resize, but being able to turn the physical sizing on/off would be great!
Ben Mitch (view profile)
15x15! wow, you're just to crazy to be real, such large numbers computers just can't handle! seriously, does that really fit on screen?
errr... yeah well there might be a bit more to squeeze out of it. but the resize thing - since panel performs layout to a physical size, it needs to remake the layout when the physical size of the window changes. subplot uses relative units, so there is no re-layout necessary on resize. it would be easy enough, for panel, to provide a flag that turned off physical sizing on resize, or that turned off physical sizing for the figure window (letting it operate only on export). would that be useful for you? do you resize windows a lot, then? :)
i may have to make an interim release with these mods - it's taking a while to get this linprog license sorted out.
Ian (view profile)
I was getting about 4.8 seconds with original panel and about 1.5-2 secs with subplot. Note subplot seems to do a lot of property enumeration too...
I'd normally not be worried, but I'm using panel to display data as it comes in in real time and long plotting times cause matlab to freeze enough that I lose my data sync (I saw this with 15x15 matrix)...
Has resizing the figure performance also improved now?
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Got it down to only 25-30% slower now. I'm getting about 2.45 secs for a 9x9 layout using subplot, and 3.15 secs for the 9x9 using panel. Are these numbers comparable to what you're seeing, Ian?
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Ian - dunno what happened there, think I overwrote my own first comment. In any case, the comment above tells the end result, even if it reads a bit funny :). Cheers.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Ach, I had a quick look since you brought it up. I used demopanel2(N=9) as a test case, as you suggested. Bit of code tidying has got the speed down from 3x longer than subplot to 1.6x longer. That line you highlighted _is_ an overhead, but preallocation doesn't seem to help.
In any case, at only 60% longer than subplot, I'm not too concerned, but I'll probably have another look, as I said, later in the year. The profiler suggests we could get another 10-15% speedup by more efficient property resolution, which would put us pretty closely in line with subplot. Might be able to avoid most of the calls to control fonts, as well, when the user hasn't specified different fonts. With all that, would probably be getting times not dissimilar to those from subplot.
Cheers
Ian (view profile)
Hi Ben, when I increase the number of axes to manage, panel starts to get very slow. To reproduce, change demopanel2 to use 9 x 9 axes, panel starts to take substantially longer than subplot. Profiling, the largest time taken is calling this line (839 times):
p.state.lin(dim).A = [p.state.lin(dim).A; a];
Wonder if preallocating wouldn't help? Resizing the figure I think also triggers this (called 2264 times).
Prakash Manandhar (view profile)
Nate Jensen (view profile)
I like it. I'd like to throw some constructive criticism in here, but I haven't played around with it enough to do that yet. So far so good. Keep it up.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
thanks - my matlab does not document the -dpdf option, or else i couldn't find it.
ok, have done that, seems to work fine. this will appear in the next release (just waiting for permission to include linprog...).
Joshua (view profile)
my usual print command is this:
figname='test';
wh=[2 3]; % width and height of page to print on
set(gcf,'PaperSize',wh,'PaperPosition',[0 0 wh],'Color','w');
print('-dpdf',figname)
i often have problems with font sizes, in that the axis-labels get partially cut off. i'm hoping that panel will somewhat alleviate this issue (in addition to all the other nice features that it has).
anyway, is that what you were looking for?
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Joshua - I'd be happy to include pdf support. Perhaps you can point me at how to export a figure to pdf using the command line? I looked at the docs for the "print" function and I can't see any mention.
Joshua (view profile)
this looks great! before i could adopt it, however, i would need to export to pdf. i modified the code a bit to do it, but it wasn't perfect (paper size needed to be updated too). anyway, i might do it for me. if the code was hosted somewhere like github, it'd be super easy for you to see my changes. but i imagine you could do it better, and quicker. any thoughts?
-- jovo
ps - the reason i want pdf over ps/eps is that on a mac, pdf viewer is nice and built-in, so i always store vector graphics as a pdf.
Daniel (view profile)
gotta thank you for your extensive work :)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Thanks Daniel - this does indeed do the job. I'm just liaising with the author about licensing, will hopefully release a repack that doesn't need the opt toolbox soon. Thanks for the heads up :).
Daniel (view profile)
There is a function called linprog in the FEX (see http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/97-linprog). But the inputs are different to the optimtool linprog. Maybe you'll find a solution with that..
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Daniel. Uh-oh - that never even crossed my mind. Err... does everyone in the world have the optimization toolbox...?
Well, the LP problem is pretty straightforward. Wonder how difficult it is to program an LP solver, probably not too tough. Or perhaps there's some source code knocking around on the interweb... Any pointers appreciated...
In the meantime, Daniel is right, you'll need the optimization toolbox. Sorry.
Daniel (view profile)
seems to require optimization toolbox (linprog()). have we got workarounds for that?
Ian (view profile)
The V2.0 update for panel is wonderful, very well documented code (including lots of demonstrations), refactored into a single classdef, and as it now works within uipanels can now be used as subplot. Panel is wonderfully flexible, and controlling super labels, fonts, and margin management elegantly with very intuitive class methods.
Thanks Ben, this is a really excellent contribution!
Ian (view profile)
Ben, thanks for adding this to your TODO! I'm also really looking forward to the handle class version of this -- hope it is a single classdef m file for easy install for the lazy :)
Cheers, Ian
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Ian
I'm just preparing a new version of Panel now (handle class based). I'll put this on the TODO list before the release. Sounds straighforward, doesn't it? I wonder if there's anything else that someone might want to use as a parent of panel...
Incidentally, you can probably do what you want with the existing version. Set panel on the whole figure, then pack it with a child with absolute positioning, with position equal to that of the uipanel. Not quite as slick, but i think it would work. e.g...
u = uipanel;
set(u, 'position', pp)
p = panel;
q = p.pack(pp);
r = q.pack( ... etc.)
cheers
Ian (view profile)
What would be great is if we could attach this not only to a figure, but a panel within a figure. I have an existing UI using subplot setting the Parent as a uipanel. This allows me to have a set of UI buttons etc in one panel and my plots in another. I'd love to use panel, but trying to force it to use a uipanel as a parent fails...
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Niko - I did as you suggested, was a good idea. Do please try the update, when it comes through, and let me know if you have any problems.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi Niko - thanks. You mean, I think, so that the xlabel/ylabel were positioned as if the four (say) sub-panels were all one axis. That's a good idea, yeah. I guess another possibility is that you might want to set all the xlabels/ylabels of all the sub-panels through a single command. Both things are possible, but the first sounds particularly useful. I'll look into it.
Thanks for the feedback.
Niko (view profile)
Very useful tool.
It would be nice to be able to easily add a panel-wide xlabel/ylabel spanning multiple children.
Renay (view profile)
Thanks for the prompt reply Ben, but I should have read your manual! The following is what I needed:
set(p.figure,'visible','off')
This turns the screen updating off. Thanks for a great package.
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Invisible? Not sure what you mean - can you explain further?
Regards
Renay (view profile)
Thanks for the great package.
How would I make the process of exporting a panel 'invisible'.
Regards
Ben Mitch (view profile)
just for info - the latest release incorporates two of suggestions above. you can now use p = panel(gcf, [2 2]) to return a 2x2 (or whatever) grid of panels (further arguments control sizing - see screenshot above). handling of xlabel, xtick and xticklabel is now seamless with the corresponding matlab functions (i think, anyway :). thanks for the feedback :).
ethan reddick (view profile)
Ben Mitch (view profile)
Hi - Thanks for comments.
yes you can change xtick labels. use p.xticklabel = {1 2 ...} where p is a panel. should work just the same as set(gca, 'xticklabel', {1 2 ...}) i think. unfortunately, this didn't find its way into the docs, sorry. next release will have this documented.
yeah, p = panel(2, 2) would be ok i suppose wouldn't it, so long as you just wanted a regular grid layout which i guess we often do. i'll see about adding that. additional pars for sizing... hmmm i'll look into it.
implement using a HANDLE class: yeah, well this was written back in the dark days when such things weren't possible. i do fancy reimplementing at some point, would be slicker. if i ever get the time :)
re the defaults idea, yeah i see what you mean. i'll stick it on the todo list.
cheers
Heeten Choxi (view profile)
Is there a way to change the values of the xtick labels? I tried doing it with set(axis,'XTickLabel', [new values]) which used to work when I used subplot but doesn't seem to work with panel.
Thanks,
Heeten
LP (view profile)
This appears to have good potential but some suggestions;
* Should have a similar interface to subplot
e.g. p = panel(2,2);
which would return a (2,2) array of panel objects
and perhaps some additional parameters for the relative sizing of each subpannel a-la the input for 'pack'
* Implement using a HANDLE class inheritance
* Allow margins to be set individually so that defaults remain
e.g. axismargin(10,[],[].10);
Good luck!