An Extension of Wilkinson's Algorithm for Positioning Tick Labels on Axes

—The non-data components of a visualization, such as axes and legends, can often be just as important as the data itself. They provide contextual information essential to interpreting the data. In this paper, we describe an automated system for choosing positions and labels for axis tick marks. Our system extends Wilkinson’s optimization-based labeling approach [11] to create a more robust, full-featured axis labeler. We define an expanded space of axis labelings by automatically generating additional nice numbers as needed and by permitting the extreme labels to occur inside the data range. These changes provide flexibility in problematic cases, without degrading quality elsewhere. We also propose an additional optimization criterion, legibility, which allows us to simultaneously optimize over label formatting, font size, and orientation. To solve this revised optimization problem, we describe the optimization function and an efficient search algorithm. Finally, we compare our ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TVCG
• Authors: Justin Talbot, Sharon Lin, Pat Hanrahan
• Keywords: Additional Nice Numbers, Additional Optimization Criterion, Optimization-based Labeling Approach, TVCG 2010