[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #55640] Feature Request: Adjust tick locations and labels based on text extents and size of axes

[Rik]

Update of bug #55640 (project octave):

              Item Group:                    None => Feature Request        
                  Status:                    None => Confirmed              
                 Release:                  5.0.90 => dev                    
                 Summary: adjusting axis properties for subplots => Feature
Request: Adjust tick locations and labels based on text extents and size of
axes

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Follow-up Comment #1:

This is a feature request.  I've changed the title to reflect the true issue. 
I agree, this is a bothersome thing.  The issue is that Octave chooses limits
for the plot based on the data, and then tries to divide the axes into five
divisions which will result in 6 ticks and ticklabels.

If the axes is particularly small, such as in a subplot, or the labels are
particularly long, such as with a large fontsize, then they will overlap. 
What the code needs to do is interact with the OpenGL renderer and determine
the size ("extent" property) of the ticklabels.  If it determines that they
overlap then it has to go back and select fewer ticks.  The issues is that
these two pieces of code are in very different parts of Octave so connecting
them will not be straightforward.

The current workaround is to manually set ticks and ticklabels.  This isn't
all that bad, but is annoying.

This isn't about subplots, it applies to any axes object.  Here is sample code
which reveals the problem by shrinking the width of the axes object.


plot (1e3:1e3:1e4, 1:10);
get (gca, 'xtick')
pos = get (gca, 'position');
pos(3) = pos(3) / 4;
set (gca, 'position', pos)
get (gca, 'xtick')


When run in Octave, the ticks are at


ans =

       0    2000    4000    6000    8000   10000


When run in Matlab, the ticks are initially at [1000, 2000, 3000, ..., 10000].
 After the axes is shrunk, there are only three ticks at [0, 5000, 10000].



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