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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.
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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, max, and stub increment may be automatically determined or specified manually.
(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)
"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:
Examples of logarithmic scaling.
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: A variation of categories scaling is pltab scaling. This may be used with the pltab program; the row stubs are automatically taken as categories in Y. A further extension to the above is pltab_row scaling, where row stubs serve as an anchor to a mini Y axis with its own scaling. An example of this is caselist.
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.
hitcount
Another example: 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
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