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Ploticus includes an array of options for defining aspects such as the plot area and the creation of axes. Data scaling options include simple linear, log, date, time, datetime, and categories.
simple2![]() Area definition Before plotting data, a scaled area must be defined. proc areadef is used to set up a plotting area, and to define its size, scaling, and location on the "page".
Axes
![]() Generated incremetally (numeric). The min and max may be automatically determined or specified manually. For the stub increment to be automatically determined, just use: stubs: inc
![]() "Self-locating stubs" are stubs that contain their own location. By using these, stubs and tics may be placed at irregular locations. The underlying scale type is usually simple linear, but it can be any type. Self-locating stubs may be... Other examples:
![]() ![]() ![]() Log scaling examples.
![]() The categories scale type allows non-numeric tags to be plotted directly. This scale type may be useful when rendering scatterplots, and bar displays (for bar placement), etc. Categories do not have to be used in order to make text stubs; often stubs, bars, etc. are placed sequentially, i.e. "as they fall", with the underlying scale type being simple linear numeric, and this is often satisfactory. However, the use of categories as the scale type ensures that data are being displayed at the correct location. More examples: Sometimes your data are categorical but do not contain the category names. You just want the first case to be plotted at X = 1, the second at X = 2 and so on. To do this, just use ordinary linear scaling, and specify the stubs literally. When rendering this way you should double check to make sure that data and stubs match correctly. Literal stubs may be specified in one of these ways: (By default literal stubs begin at X=1 or Y=1, rather than at 0, since this is usually the desired result for bar placement, etc. This may be overridden using stubrange: 0)
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The date scale type allows date values to be plotted directly. Like other time measures, dates are almost always plotted against the X axis. A wide variety of date notations are supported. More examples:
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The datetime scale type allows time values to be plotted directly
across multiple days.
A datetime datafield consists of a date value and a time value connected
by a dot (.). The date and time values may be in any of the supported
plotting formats.
Datetime scaling, with time windowingSometimes it is desirable to show only portions of each day, when showing the entire 24 hour day would be too much. Examples of this include a work day or a trading day. datetime scaling allows you to do this- you can indicate the time range for each day at the end of the datetime keyword. For example, datetime9-17 would show only the hours from 9:00 to 17:00 for each day. See scaleunits for more details on using datetime with time windowing.![]() Example:
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![]() data display engine Copyright Steve Grubb ![]() |
Ploticus is hosted at http://ploticus.sourceforge.net |
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