Octopus Stuff Prize...If you can help me!!!

[Donnerboy]

OK, some of you know my abundance of ceph related stuff. Well here is your chance to get one of them as a prize.

I need a program that allows me to create a graph that allows the x-axis labels to be put in on a diagonal. If anyone has one of these that I can get a copy of to make a single graph (maybe two), they can choose one of the items below as a lavished-with-thanks reward.

There will be no cost for shipping either. I will bear all expense. I just need a copy of a program that can allow me to get past this one issue at work.

Please let me know as soon as possible. The prize will go on a first come, first wins basis.

The prizes are:
1) an octo toothbrush holder

or

2) an octo soap dish

or

3) a brass octo jewelry stamp

Get me the program, and pick the one you want!!!

 

[DHyslop]

Microsoft Excel can do this, and you probably already have a copy.

Is this what you want to do?

Dan

 

[Donnerboy]

Diagonal X-axis Graph

Actually, here is an example of a vertical label for an x-axis. I need it to be diagonal.

Open Office and Excel allow one to change it to diagonal, but it doesn't really change the box size. Some graphs make the x-axis as this as the y-axis and then allow it to bend once it hits the graph and then goes vertical. That is what I need.

 

[Donnerboy]

Something like this...

This is what I need.

See how the labels on the x-axis are turned? This allows the collumns not to be as wide as the word, but can be just a dot, x, or whatever...

 

[DHyslop]

Excel will do it. On the above example I just rotated them the other way. Double click on the labels along the x-axis, then select the alignment tab.

Like you said, that just rotates them and doesn't adjust the graph. If you want to compress the x-axis after doing this, you can do it by again double-clicking the x-axis labels and selecting the scale tab.

Give me a sec and I bet I can duplicate that second image (with the months) exactly using the described techniques in Excel

Dan

OK. Here it is. The months are at an angle to shorten the total width of the graph:

Is this what you're looking for?

 

[Donnerboy]

Look at these variations...

Here is the issue with that...

Because it does not bend with the slanting of the label, the collumn must remain a certain width (see example #1); however if it could bend or slant with the label then the collumns could be closed very tightly together.




I know you like Excel, because you are the Space Pope, ...but we don't need to bring Rome into this.

Crocodylus Pontifex

 

[DHyslop]

OK, so you're not looking so much for a data graph but for spreadsheet lines?

edit - to be honest, whenever I have a graph that's going somewhere serious I just let Excel generate it then paste it into Adobe Illustrator to do the cosmetics.

 

[Donnerboy]

Never thought of that, but there are several packages out there that will do it very professionally.

I am hoping taht with all the marine scientists and biologist out there, someone would have some kind of program.

 

[DHyslop]

You might try Grapher, there's a free demo at:

RockWare Geoscientific Software Consulting & Training

The demo might not let you save or print, though.

To be honest a lot of scientists I've worked with just go with Excel because its universally available and even the output from the best software needs a bit of tweeking before publication.

Dan

 

[monty]

gnuplot homepage

help set label

lets you rotate labels to an arbitrary degree. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a "rotate by " for the xlabel, but its help file says "use label if you need the more fancy stuff."

of course, gnuplot is really only good for graphing numbers, so if it's more spreadsheet-like, it's probably not so hot.

I bet TeX or LaTeX can do it, too.

Both these options have the added advantage of being free & open source.

 

[Donnerboy]

DeltaGraph

I am trying the DeltaGraph stuff now.