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Note: the Time Plot has multiple plot
Zones,
and the axes are configured individually for each zone.
The Axes (
) control for the
time plot window has the following tabs:
Coords tab of time Axes control
The Coords tab controls the vertical axis coordinates
(you can't flip or rescale the time axis).
It has the following options:
-
Y Log
- If selected, vertical axis coordinates are logarithmic,
otherwise they are linear.
-
Y Flip
- If selected, vertical axis coordinate axes increase down rather
than up.
Navigation tab of time Axes control
The Navigation tab controls details of how the
navigation works.
It has the following options:
-
Pan/Zoom Axes
- By default, dragging with the mouse or using the mouse wheel
on the body of the plot
will pan or zoom in the horizontal (time) direction only,
which is usually what you want for a time series.
Using this control you can make it work in the vertical direction as well.
-
Zoom Factor
- Controls the factor by which each zoom action zooms the plot.
Moving this slider to the left/right makes the mouse more/less sensitive
(one wheel click or dragging a fixed distance has more/less zoom effect).
Range tab of time Axes control
The Range tab provides manual configuration of the
visible range of the plot. Making changes to this tab will reset
the visible plot range, but not vice versa - zooming and panning
in the usual way will not change the settings of this panel.
Filling in the Minimum/Maximum
fields for either or both axes will
constrain the corresponding range of the visible data.
The limits corresponding to any of those fields that are left blank
will initially be worked out from the data.
The Subrange double-sliders restrict the ranges
within the (explicit or automatic) min/max ranges.
Note you can move both sliders at once by grabbing a position between the two.
For the time axis, the range may be entered as an ISO-8601 date/time value.
The Clear button resets all the fields.
The Submit button updates the plot with the current values
in this tab, as does making any changes to it.
Grid tab of time Axes control
The Grid tab configures the appearance of the axis grid.
It has the following options:
-
Time Format
- Selects the representation for time/date in which the horizontal
axis is labelled.
Options are
ISO-8601,
decimal year,
Modified Julian Day,
and Unix (seconds since midnight on 1 Jan 1970).
-
Draw Grid
- If true, grid lines will be drawn across the plot
for every tick mark.
-
Minor Ticks
- If set, minor (unlabelled) tick marks will be drawn between the
major (labelled) ones.
-
Time/Y Tick Crowding
- Use the slider to influence how many tick marks are drawn on each axis.
Labels tab of time Axes control
The Labels tab controls the text label on the Y axis
(the horizontal axis is not labelled).
If the Auto checkbox is set, the text will be taken
from one of the data coordinates being plotted on that axis.
To override that with your own axis label, unset Auto and type
text in to the Y Label field.
Font tab
The Font tab configures the font used for axis annotation.
It also affects some other things like the legend.
-
Text Syntax
- How to turn the text into characters on the screen.
Plain and Antialias both take the
text at face value, but Antialias smooths the characters.
Antialiased text usually looks nicer, but can be perceptibly slower to plot.
At time of writing, on MacOS antialiased text seems to be required to
stop the writing coming out upside-down for non-horizontal text.
LaTeX interprets the text as LaTeX source code
and typesets it accordingly.
-
Font Size
- Size of the font in points.
-
Font Style
- Style of the font.
-
Font Weight
- Whether the font is plain, bold or italic.
Next Previous Up Contents
Next: Old-Style Plot Windows
Up: Time Plot Window
Previous: Time Navigation
TOPCAT - Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And Tables
Starlink User Note253
TOPCAT web page:
http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/
Author email:
m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk
Mailing list:
topcat-user@jiscmail.ac.uk