[ncl-talk] legend font size

[Mary Haley]

Hi Gerard,

I'm hoping Dave Brown will step in and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think
the resizing of the legend labels is going to happen no matter what,
because it's trying to fit everything inside the legend box.

You can work around this by using gsn_create_legend (instead of
gsn_legend_ndc) to create the legend with the same resources as before, and
then use setvalues to reset the lgLabelFontHeightF resource to be what you
originally wanted it to be.  Setvalues will simply change the resource
value of an existing object, and the legend manager doesn't enter the
picture and try to shrink your labels.

It's a kludge, but I think it should work. here's what the old code looks
like:

  gsn_legend_ndc(wks_png, num_curves, legend_labels, 0.20, 0.35, lgres)
  frame(wks_png)

And here's what the new code should look like:

 ;---gsn_create_legend creates the legend, but doesn't draw it
  legend_id = gsn_create_legend(wks_png, num_curves, legend_labels, lgres)

;---Reset lgLabelFontHeightF to the desired value
  setvalues legend_id
    "lgLabelFontHeightF" : lgres at lgLabelFontHeightF
  end setvalues

;--Now draw the legend
  draw(legend_id)
  frame(wks_png)

You may need to place with lgres at vpXF and legres at vpYF to position the
legend as desired.

--Mary


On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 11:19 PM, Gerard Ketefian - NOAA Affiliate <
gerard.ketefian at noaa.gov> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'd like to generate a legend in which the font size of the item labels is
> the same regardless of the length (i.e. the number of characters) of the
> item labels.  I'm using gsn_legend_ndc(...) to add the legend to my plot.
>
> The problem I'm having is that NCL is adjusting the font size (I suppose
> to always fit the labels within the width of the legend box), and I'm not
> getting the font size that I'd like.
>
> I've attached an NCL script (test_legend.ncl) that generates png files
> showing what happens when:
>
> 1) No adjustments are made to any legend resources (case of manual_manage
> set to False in the script).  I tried a case of short legend labels
> (test_legend_autoManage_short_labels.png) and another with long ones
> (test_legend_autoManage_long_labels.png).  You can see that NCL adjusts the
> font size, I suppose to fit it within the legend box width.
>
> 2) Adjustments are made to several legend resources, including setting
> lgAutoManage to False (case of manual_manage set to False in the script)
> and setting a specific value for lgLabelFontHeightF.  According to the
> online documentation, in this case NCL should not adjust the font size, and
> I should get whatever font size I specified via lgLabelFontHeightF.  Again
> I tried a case of both short (test_legend_manualManage_short_labels.png)
> and long (test_legend_manualManage_long_labels.png) legend labels.  You can
> see that again, NCL adjusted the font size.
>
> Any idea how I can make NCL use the font size I specified, without any
> automatic adjustments?
>
> Thanks,
> Gerard
>
>
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