Avoid overlapping text in MATLAB digits

Question

When I enter text in MATLAB programmatically using text(x,y,'label') I often find that the text blocks overlap, making them unreadable. I was wondering if there is any automated way to offset text blocks so that they do not overlap. For example, if I added 3 labels left justified at the points (0,0), (0,01,0) and (0,02,0), I would like them to be rebuilt like this:

 . . . label1 label2 label3 

whereas currently they look like this:

 . . . la~~~~~~l3 

where squiggles is unreadable due to overlap.

If this has not already been done, I could collapse my own algorithm / heuristic for the task, but is there a way to request a figure (or gcf descriptor) for the bounding fields of all the existing box text on it? So, can I name it every time I want to place a shortcut?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You do not need to do it yourself. Here we discussed a tool that handles text placement http://blogs.mathworks.com/pick/2009/01/02/automatic-text-placement/

Direct link to file sharing http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/11466

Even if you want to play your part, this would be a good place to start.

Hth darren

Answer 2

Here is the solution I came up with ... it seems to work fine.

 function h = textfit(x,y,txt,varargin) % textfit(x,y,txt,varargin) % % Mike Lawrence 2011 ythresh = 0.4; % maximal allowable overlap (includes cell padding accounted for in "extent" property) xthresh = 0.1; n = length(x); if ~iscell(txt), txt={txt}; end if length(y)~=n || length(txt)~=n, error('length mismatch between x,y,txt'); end h = text(x,y,txt,varargin{:}); yl=ylim; ytot=diff(yl); xl=xlim; xtot=diff(xl); maxtries = 100; for t=1:maxtries ext = nan(n,4); for i=1:n, ext(i,:) = get(h(i),'extent'); end xstart=ext(:,1); xsz=ext(:,3); xend=xstart+xsz; ystart=ext(:,2); ysz=ext(:,4); yend=ystart+ysz; overlapx = zeros(n,n); overlapy = zeros(n,n); for i1=1:n-1, for i2=i1+1:n if xstart(i1)<=xend(i2)&xstart(i2)<=xend(i1) overlapx(i1,i2)=(min(xend(i2)-xstart(i1),xend(i1)-xstart(i2)))/(min(xsz(i1),xsz(i2))); end if ystart(i1)<=yend(i2)&ystart(i2)<=yend(i1) overlapy(i1,i2)=(min(yend(i2)-ystart(i1),yend(i1)-ystart(i2)))/(min(ysz(i1),ysz(i2))); end end,end overlapmax = max(overlapx,overlapy); ov = (overlapx>xthresh & overlapy>ythresh); [o1 o2] = find(ov); if isempty(o1), break; end [tmp ord] = sort(overlapmax(find(ov))); o1=o1(ord); o2=o2(ord); moved = false(n,1); for i=1:length(o1), i1=o1(i); i2=o2(i); if moved(i1) || moved(i2), continue; end pos1 = get(h(i1),'position'); pos2 = get(h(i2),'position'); oy = overlapy(i1,i2)*min(ysz(i1),ysz(i2)); ox = overlapx(i1,i2)*min(xsz(i1),xsz(i2)); if oy/ytot < ox/xtot % overlapy is easier to fix shift = 0.5*(1-ythresh)*oy; if ystart(i1)<ystart(i2) % i1 above i2 pos1(2)=pos1(2)-shift; pos2(2)=pos2(2)+shift; else % i1 below i2 pos1(2)=pos1(2)+shift; pos2(2)=pos2(2)-shift; end else % overlapx is easier to fix shift = 0.5*(1-xthresh)*ox; if xstart(i1)<xstart(i2) % i1 left of i2 pos1(1)=pos1(1)-shift; pos2(1)=pos2(1)+shift; else % i1 right of i2 pos1(1)=pos1(1)+shift; pos2(1)=pos2(1)-shift; end end set(h(i1),'position',pos1); set(h(i2),'position',pos2); moved([i1 i2]) = true; end end if nargout==0, clear h, end