#381 %c working with non-linear units

2014-03-16T20:07:56.171000Z

Ticket moved from /p/gnuplot/bugs/1357/

#1357 %c working with non-linear units

2014-03-16T20:03:17.842000Z

In my opinion this is more a feature request than a bug.
Ethan, could you please move this tracker item?

%c working with non-linear units

2014-03-15T20:48:42.416000Z

The %c format specifiers for formatting axis tics is awesome but it may lack an issue.

Assume a=1345.13 and you want to output it as "%g%cm" where m is a literal that stands for meter (the unit). You get 1.34513km. Good.

Now you want to output a as "%g%cm^{-1}" you still get 1.344513km^{-1}. Under SI rules, it should read 1.344513mm^{-1} since it is understood that the exponent always alters both the unit (meter) and the prefix (milli).

Sort of an modifiers for %c may easily solve this problem. For instance the modifier - so that %-c may alter the behaviour of %c: when catching the scientific power (3 in the example), change sign (-3) and get the appropriate character replacement for scientific power.

Some complexities arise if the exponent is other than -1. If you want to output "%g%cm^2" the gnuplot solution 1.34513km^2 is not good either. However I can't hardly see any comprehensive solution to m^2 or m^3 if your character replacement jumps in three orders of magnitude (that makes 6 orders of magnitude for m^2 and 9 orders for m^3). In this case you just shouldn't take advantage of the %c format specifier.

However, the case m^{-1} is easily solvable and could be frequently used.

I attach an example using:
set format x "%.s%cJ"
set format y "%.s%cJ^{-1}"
set logscale x
set logscale y 1000

Char replacentment in the y-axis should read, from low to high, 1GJ^{-1}, 1MJ^{-1}, 1 kJ^{-1} and 1J^{-1}. X-axis shows energy, Y-axis density of probability

Recent changes to 381: %c working with non-linear units

#381 %c working with non-linear units

#1357 %c working with non-linear units

%c working with non-linear units