C-PLOT

Scientific Graphics and Data Analysis

6.9.2. - Delimited special character sequences



Some of the following special sequences take decimal parameters, represented by the variable N. The first character before N. becomes the delimiter. Scanning for N. continues until either a matching delimiter or non-digit, non-sign or non-decimal-point character is found. The delimiter can be any character.

 Sequence   Meaning 
 \h'N  Move horizontally (12 units per character width; negative is left) 
 \v'N  Move vertically (12 units per line; negative is up) 
 \S'N  Change character size (in percent; neg. is smaller) 
 \T'N  Set character angle (in degrees; negative tilts left) 
 \R'N  Rotate text baseline (in degrees; negative is counterclockwise) 
 \P'N  Select pen number N 
 \H'N  Move N spaces horizontally from beginning of line 
 \V'N  Move N lines vertically from beginning of line 
 \W'text  Move horizontally the width of text 



Although the text rotation sequence, \R'N', may be included in titles and labels, C-PLOT makes no adjustments to center the rotated text or keep it from colliding with other parts of the plot.

The last three commands are especially useful with the proportionally spaced fonts, when you want to line up text in columns or do overstrikes such as underlining. With proportionally spaced fonts, you don't necessarily know how wide a particular string of text will be. As an example, consider this annotation text produced by the fit user functions described in Chapter 11:
\H@13@\W@-Linear @Linear = 4.02\(+-0.83
The \H"13" sequence positions the equals sign 13 character units from the annotation's start. Then the \W"-Linear" sequence backs up the width of the text before printing it. The minus sign is part of the \W syntax and indicates the motion is to be to the left. The @ symbol is used as the sequence delimiter.