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PlotMarkers Documentation inconsistency

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg121272] PlotMarkers Documentation inconsistency
  • From: Alexey Popkov <lehin.p at gmail.com>
  • Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 05:38:36 -0400 (EDT)
  • Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com

Hello,

It seems that I have found one very important statement on the
Documentation page for PlotMarkers which is inconsistent with real
behavior of this option.

On the page

http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/PlotMarkers.html

under "More information" we read: "With PlotMarkers->{g,s}, the object
g is scaled so that one unit of its coordinates corresponds to a
fraction s of the width of the whole graphic." Let us see how in
really this option works. There are at least two inconsistent cases:

1a) When using characters as PlotMarkers:

In[20]:= Cases[
 ListPlot[{1, 1}, PlotMarkers -> {"\[HappySmiley]", .1}],
 x_Inset :> InputForm[x], Infinity]

Out[20]= {Inset[Style["\[HappySmiley]", FontSize -> 0.1], 3],
   Inset[Style["\[HappySmiley]", FontSize -> 0.1], 4]}

One can see that the size of the character "\[HappySmiley]" is
completely independent from the width of the whole graphics. Moreover,
it is doubtful that this can be properly fixed by replacing FontSize -
> 0.1 by FontSize -> Scaled[0.1] since (as fas as I know) font scaling
is not completely smooth (I can be wrong here). What is the simplest
workaround for this (I think that we probably should scale entire
Inset instead of using the FontSize option)? This bug is very
annoying.

2b) When using Graphics as PlotMarkers:

In[24]:= Cases[
 ListPlot[{1, 1}, PlotMarkers -> {Graphics@Circle[{0, 0}, 1], 0.1}],
 x_Inset :> InputForm[x], Infinity]

Out[24]= {Inset[Graphics[Circle[{0, 0}, 1]], 3, Automatic,
Scaled[{0.1, 0.1}]],
 Inset[Graphics[Circle[{0, 0}, 1]], 4, Automatic, Scaled[{0.1, 0.1}]]}

One can see that the size of the Graphics is scaled not only with the
width of the plot but also with its height. I think that this behavior
is right and so the Documentation needs to be corrected.

P.S. I use Mathematica 7.0.1




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