suplabel

Places text as a title, xlabel, or ylabel on a group of subplots.

Description

PLaces text as a title, xlabel, or ylabel on a group of subplots. Returns a handle to the label and a handle to the axis.

[ax,h]=suplabel(text,whichLabel,supAxes)

returns handles to both the axis and the label.

ax=suplabel(text,whichLabel,supAxes)

returns a handle to the axis only. suplabel(text) with one input argument assumes whichLabel='x'

whichLabel is any of 'x', 'y', or 't', specifying whether the text is to be the xlable, ylabel, or title respectively.
 
supAxes is an optional argument specifying the Position of the "super" axes surrounding the subplots. supAxes defaults to [.075 .075 .85 .85] specify supAxes if labels get chopped or overlay subplots

EXAMPLE:
   subplot(2,2,1);ylabel('ylabel1');title('title1')
   subplot(2,2,2);ylabel('ylabel2');title('title2')
   subplot(2,2,3);ylabel('ylabel3');xlabel('xlabel3')
   subplot(2,2,4);ylabel('ylabel4');xlabel('xlabel4')
   [ax,h1]=suplabel('super X label');
   [ax,h2]=suplabel('super Y label','y');
   [ax,h3]=suplabel('super Title' ,'t');
   set(h3,'FontSize',30)
 
  SEE ALSO: text, title, xlabel, ylabel, zlabel, subplot,
            suptitle (Matlab Central)

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7 (R14)

[urs (us) schwarz]

1) nice little helper; 2) it would be more convenient if supaxes would default to the outer boundaries of all axes on the canvas if it is not defined by the user (see mtit on the FEX); 3) supaxes' default values do not correspond to those shown in the help section

[jon erickson]

Thank you--just what I was looking for! very easy to use. Just to follow up on comment 3) above, the default values are [0.08 0.08 0.84 0.84], not a major change.

[him s]

nopes..not working

[Pablo Velarde]

Excellent!

[pippo baudo]

 

[Chris Addison]

Exactly what I was looking for! Thanks for this.

[Tom Van Grootel]

Axes below the "Ghost" axes made by SUPLABEL are not editable (zoom, scale, rotate). Hint to improve this: 'HitTest' set to 'Off', but this still did not solve it.

[Pablo Pablo]

I can not rotate an image when I use this function.

[Pierrick Mialle]

 

[Jake Munster]

Useful tool, but as Tom Van Grotel said, I can't zoom in on the subplots! Setting 'HitTest' to 'Off' did not work =(

[Henry]

Good tool, but like all other comments, I cannot zoom/rotate the image afterwards.

[omzaz]

 

[omzaz]

potentially useful for me, but not until zoom/rotate issue is fixed.

[Scott Otterson]

A quick solution to a common problem. Zooming would be nice -- I haven't checked the underpinnings, but if anyone is interested in taking a look

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/19314

decorates plots with extra labels and survives the zoom button

[Joe McGlinchy]

GREAT! works perfect thanks

[sophie neve]

I have aproblem with it : if I only do 4 subplot out of 6, for example 1,2,4,5 and not 3 and 6, the title is not centered any more.... sad :(

[sophie neve]

I have seen another think that is sad : no greek letter is allowed
Example :
suplabel('log_{10} (Re \epsilon *)','y');

does not write the epsilon, right?

[Lars]

Quite useful and simple to use. You might consider to change the argument checking to allow for cell strings (multi-line) labels:

if ~(ischar(text) || (iscell(text) && all(cellfun(@ischar,text))))
  error('text must be a string or a cell string')
end
if ~ischar(whichLabel)
  error('whichLabel must be a string')
end

[Daniel Golden]

The problem with zooming is that suplabel places its axis on top of all other axes in the figure. You can fix this by adding the following lines under the
ax=axes('Units','Normal','Position',supAxes,'Visible','off');
line:

ch = get(get(ax, 'parent'), 'children');
set(get(ax, 'parent'), 'children', [ch(2:end); ch(1)]);

This moves the "suplabel" axis to the bottom of the figures' axes list and allows you to mess with the original axes on the figure.

[Patrick Tai]

 

[Patrick Tai]

I want to have a super-legend.
When the subplots are all multi-lined with the same grouping scheme, their legends will be the same. Putting a legend in each will be too busy and take too much space.
Is there a way to put the common legend outside the plot matrix?

[Jason]

Is there a way to have a second "super Y label" that corresponds to subplots 2 and 4 of the example figure?

Thanks.

[GERMÁN]

when I want three subttulos the super title. How should it be?

L1 = "Energy spectrum function E = f (FFT (\ kappa) ^ 2) ';
L2 = ['height'];
L3 = ['Regression']
 [AX4, h3] = suplabel ([L1, L2, L3], 't');
thanks!!

[GERMÁN]

when I want three titles in the super title. How should it be?

 L1 = "Energy spectrum function E = f (FFT (\ kappa) ^ 2) ';
L2 = ['height'];
L3 = ['Regression']
 [AX4, h3] = suplabel ([L1, L2, L3], 't');

   
thanks

[Geo]

A very useful script!!! Thank you a lot!

[Gemma]

Thank you very much.. i know have some awesomely titled plots :)

[Anthony Hopf]

Can't seem to get multi-line to work... posted in NewsReader

[Anthony Hopf]

Using Lars advice I can use multi-line and latex!! Nice function

[Christopher]

Has anyone given thought to vectorizing or otherwise speeding up suplabel? I have figures with many subplots (of histograms), eg., subplot(6,8,i); and using suplabel to create the x- and y-labels changes the figure creation time from 5 seconds to 30 seconds.

[Christopher]

And I have some code that changes that figure creation time using suplabel from 30 seconds back down to 5.2 seconds. Apply the following to suplabel, replacing the loop through ah (lines 74 to 82) with:
%%%%%
AH=get(ah);
ii=find(strcmp({AH(:).Visible}.','on'));
thisPos=reshape([AH(ii).Position],4,length(ii)).';
leftMin=min(thisPos(:,1));
bottomMin=min(thisPos(:,2));
leftMax=max(thisPos(:,1)+thisPos(:,3));
bottomMax=max(thisPos(:,2)+thisPos(:,4));
%%%%%
 and replacing line 110, kudos to Daniel Golden for his suggestion above, with
%%%%%
ch = get(get(ax, 'parent'), 'children');
set(get(ax, 'parent'), 'children', [ch(2:end); ch(1)]);
%%%%%
Now (almost) all multi-handle axis operations are vectorized.

I do not know how to do it yet, but I will try to put up a unified diff patch if I can figure how to attach a file.

[omzaz]

Does not work with plotyy.....it removes the 2nd axis plot

[K R]

This is fantastic - a huge time saver and so easy to use. Thank you!

[Jeff Evans]

 

[Erica B]

Anyway to get the super label to not be squished at the top of the figure window, and closer to the subplots? Top of super title is nearly cut-off, while there is a chunk of space between the super title and the subplots.

I tried
[ax,h1]=suplabel([' ',' ','Title'],'t');
to put some empty lines above the title, but it's still squished at the top of the window...