Re: key patch update

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Tuesday 09 November 2004 03:57 pm, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> 
> Something else I've noticed about the way the key is laid out...  If you 
> look at the last example of the histograms, you'll see that the sample 
> length (i.e., samplen) is constant for all columns.  In some ways that 
> looks nice, but in some ways it also uses a lot of space.  That is, the 
> "United Kingdom" entry determines the width of _every_ column.  I wonder 
> how it would look if the default, non-samplen-specified layout would 
> allow those columns to vary, so that the Denmark/Norway column etc were 
> moved over.

We must not lose track of the most important point, however, which is
that the caption is supposed to match the figure.  In the ideal case
for histograms like this one, I would want each column of the key to
start exactly under the corresponding set of histograms.  At the very
least I would like a guarantee that if the histograms come in sets of,
say, 3+2+3 then the key columns also contain 3, 2, and 3 entries
correspondingly.

> The modified key at first seems rather difficult, but perhaps not. 
>  Rather than algrebra, an exhaustive attempt at layout could be done. 
>  Of course, I don't think we want a complete exhaustive search in that 
> we could rearrange the order of the key entries.  (Although I bet 
> something creative could be done whereby one first orders the key 
> samples by width... but .)  Rather, one would begin by attempting to put 
> all samples on a row (column).  If they don't fit, then one starts there.

If you can figure out a smarter automatic method, great.
But I'd settle for the much simpler alternative of some flag that
forces a column break.   In the case of histograms, I'd like the
"newhistogram" command to force such a column break.  In the general
case there would have to be some user-accessible flag or option.
Maybe
	set key columns=(3,3,2)
which means generate a new column after the 3rd, 6th, and 8th entries.
This would need some further thought.  Does one count or not count
plots with 'notitle'?


-- 
Ethan A Merritt       merritt@u.washington.edu
Biomolecular Structure Center
Mailstop 357742
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195