[vtk-developers] VTK GSOC Project - Tick label positioning implementation update

[Tharindu De Silva]

Hi All,

       I am implementing the paper "An Extension of Wilkinson’s Algorithm
for Positioning Tick Labels on Axes" published in VisWeek 2010 as part of
the Goole Summer of Code Project (GSOC) in VTK. This will replace the
functionality of current CalculateNiceMInMax() method in vtkAxis class.  I
have done most of the implementation and would like to receive help and
feedback from the community to integrate the new class to the current VTK
framework.  The main highlights of this work are;

  1 )  Introducing an optimization-based method to calculate tick label
positions.  (This will improve the current positioning of the tick labels)
  2 )  If the algorithm fails to find a good positioning scheme, as a last
resort it will try to find optimum tick labels by reducing the font size,
changing the orientation of the fonts (from horizontal to vertical) and
changing the label formats.
 3  )  Currently,  there are two label formats supported in the API. (i.e.
standard and scientific).  This has been extended  to eight different
formats in the paper as follows.

     1 - Decimal e.g. 5000
     2 - Factored Decimals e.g. 5 (thousands)
     3 - Thousands K e.g. 5K
     4 - Factored K e.g. 5(K)
     5 - Millions M e.g. 5M
     6 - Factored M e.g. 5(M)
     7 - Scientific 5 * 10^6
     8 - Factored Scientific 5 (10^6)

   Currently, there is no method in vtkAxis class that automatically changes
the font size, orientation and format of the tick labels based on data.  I
would like to get your feedback about the readability of the above formats
and get your comments on my code to integrate this work to the current
repository.

Thank you very much,

Tharindu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://public.kitware.com/pipermail/vtk-developers/attachments/20110627/be190721/attachment.html>