Re: Controlling axis labels in IDL plots?

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Stein Vidar Hagfors Haugan (steinhh@ulrik.uio.no) writes:

> What's your excuse, David?

I don't have an excuse. I just always liked things to *look*
right. Probably stems from the first time I came home and told
my wife I had quit my job (without warning, as would become the
custom with me). "What do you plan to do now?", she asked me,
with just a little bit of threat in her voice. "Donno", I said,
"Maybe I'll draw scientific illustrations for a living."

And that's what I did. In those days we used expensive pens
and drew in India ink on vellum paper. If you made a mistake,
you had to white it out. If you made enough mistakes, you started
over. Since that cut into the profit margin pretty severely, I 
learned to concentrate and not make any mistakes. My rule was:
three white-outs, and start over. I was very good at it, and I
damn sure learned how to align lettering on axes! :-)

The best part of the job was that I eventually learned how
to work at this while practicing my lines for the local
Community Theater productions. It made me productive both
day *and* night. 

> Anyway, seems like Liam's suggestion is the best one can do without
> using XYOUTS. Note that prepending a "!C" on the Y axis title will
> push the text towards the axis, and likewise prepending one for the
> X axis title will push it down.

Pretty neat trick, huh? I've already updated my book, since
this is the only thing I have ever found that successfully
gets that X axis label in the right place.

Cheers,

David

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
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