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Creating, Printing and Saving Plots

[creating] [preventing] [layouts] [display lists] [multiple plots/page] [saving to disk] [printing]

Creating Plots

There are several ways to tell MatOFF to create a plot based on the current data file and search specifications. The simplest way is to issue a Show command. Normally, this command will create one drawing of your data. The drawing may have many components, including rasters, a histogram, etc. The drawing is called a "plot" and the specification of the components is called a "layout". The Show command can create multiple plots of the same data if multiple layouts are specified with the Display command. The Display command is discussed in later sections.

The Old plot command is similar to the Show command, but it allows you to specify which plot window will receive the plot if you have multiple windows open on the screen. New plot is also similar to Show, but it creates a new plot window before doing any drawing. Erase clears the current plot window for reuse.

Plots can also be created automatically. The Autoupdate command will cause MatOFF automatically re-plot the current data each time a layout parameter is changed. Manualupdate turns off that feature.

Preventing Plots

MatOFF can do a statistical analysis is the current data each time a plot is created (see Exporting Results). There may be times when you may want the statistical results, but not the screen plots. The command Set plot noshow will disable screen plots. Set plot show will re-enable screen plots. The commands Hide plot and Show plot can be used as synonyms.

Layouts

The plots produced by MatOFF can include spike rasters, analog traces, text, etc. The "layout" determines which elements are plotted, and how they are arranged on a page. MatOFF can hold 10 different layouts in memory at one time, but only one layout is active. The Layout command determines which layout is active. The Display command determines which layout(s) to use when a Show command is given.

Here are some example layout commands:

raster show
raster ypos 25
raster size 1
raster separation 4

These commands set up the display of spike rasters. The parameters in each command fine-tune some feature of the raster display. See Layout Parameters for a more complete use of these specifications.

Managing Layouts

MatOFF maintains an internal list of 10 layouts. It is very common to simplify MatOFF operations by using layout number 1 for all plotting. However, the user should be aware of the ability to specify and use multiple layouts.

Only one is active at any time. Active means that a layout command like

raster size 1

changes the plot elements for only that layout. Here are the commands that help manage layouts.

copy <a> <b>	make layout <b> exactly like layout <a>
initialize	set all 10 layouts to the standard default set of layout parameters
layout <n>	choose layout number <n> to be the current layout
layout file <filename>	load a group of 10 layouts from the specified layout file
layout save <filename>	save current group of 10 layouts to the specified layout file
save <filename> only	save the active layout information as a protocol file, which can be restored using the Load command

The Show command and the Display List

The Show command can produce several plots in a row. You can save three different views of your data to disk with a single Show command using the display list and the Set plot keep command. Set up layout 1 with the first view, layout 2 with the second view, and layout 3 with the third view. In the simple example here, layouts 1, 2, and 3 are the same, except that the analog traces are removed from layout 2 and the raster traces are removed from layout 3:

layout 1
analog show
raster show
copy 1 2
copy 1 3
layout 2
analog noshow
layout 3
raster noshow

The following commands configure MatOFF to plot all three views of the data whenever a Show command is issued:

display 1-3
show

The last two commands, Display and Show can be combined into a single Show command:

show 1-3

Multiple plots per page

MatOFF can place from 1 to 72 plots in a single figure or printed page. The Axis multiplot command divides the display figure into equal-size rectangles (panels) to make space for multiple plots. For example:

axis multiplot 4

divides the display window into 4 equal panels.

1	2
3	4

The Axis subplot command determines which panel will receive the next plot. Here is a typical example of creating a figure with four plots.

erase
axis multiplot 4
axis subplot 1
load left_sequence
show
axis subplot 2
load right_sequence
show
axis subplot 3
load up_sequence
show
axis subplot 4
load down_sequence
show

Unfortunately, using multiple layouts with a show command (e.g., show 1-4) will not position the 4 plots on separate subplots as you might expect. A separate Axis subplot command is required before each Show command.

The Axis subplot command describes the page layout for up to 72 plots on a page.

Drawing twice on the same plot

It is possible to draw twice or more on the same plot. Use the Overplot command instead of Show or Old plot.

Saving Plots to disk

The Plot command saves a figure containing one or more plots, to the disk. Plots can be saved to disk automatically each time a Show command is given, using the Set plot keep command. The environmental variable GRAPHICSFORMAT selects the file format of the saved figure. See the Plot command for more details.

Printing Plots

The Print command sends a figure containing one or more plots to the default Windows printer. The same command also controls the orientation of the paper (portrait vs. landscape) and the paper size. Printing will try to match the color of the plots, unless color printing is disabled (with Set print nocolor). When color is disabled, all elements of the plot will be in black with a white background. At the moment the print command can only print to the default Windows printer.

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