Rotate Tick Label

ROTATETICKLABEL rotates tick labels.

Description

ROTATETICKLABEL rotates tick labels. Any arbitrary rotation is acceptable. A demo is included. Right now it only can rotate XTickLabels but it would be easy to modify to rotate YTickLabels.

TH=ROTATETICKLABEL(H,ROT) is the calling form where H is a handle to the axis that contains the XTickLabels that are to be rotated. ROT is an optional parameter that specifies the angle of rotation. The default angle is 90. TH is a handle to the text objects created. For long strings such as those produced by datetick, you may have to adjust the position of the axes so the labels don't get cut off.

• Acknowledgements: This submission has inspired the following:; Rotate and alternate tick labels on any Xaxis (top or bottom)
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7 (R14)
• Other requirements: None

[oh kwoun]

 

[alex redstone]

Just what i was looking for. There should be a ticklabel property like this for arbitrary rotation. Thanks a lot.

[Karl Stahl]

 

[Kathleen Spees]

 

[peter mao]

exactly what i was looking for!

[François Portet]

exactly what I was looking for, thank you

[Scott Otterson]

This is a label rotation revolution!

[J C]

you, sir, are the man.

[Christoph Mudersbach]

Well done. Great idea.

[Debprakash Patnaik]

I am currently using it, Very happy with the results. Thanks

[g l]

The only suggestion I would have is the option to right justify the tick labels. I varied the format to make it compatible with a pareto diagram since some of the names were too long, but not all of the names were of the same length.

[x x]

thanks!

[Carlos Busso]

The only change that I did was to include the font size of the text as a variable. The function is very clever.

[Lucas Fortini]

 

[Gus Lott]

Rotation works well. The rotation goes over the X Axis Label. Will need to lower the x axis label below the new x tick label text.

[Jose Vargas]

It works fine. Thanks a lot for posting this useful function. I still can not believe Matlab 7.2 does not have a rotation tick label property in the axes handle.

[Matthias Hundt]

 

[Shane Migliore]

Thanks. Exactly what I was looking for...plus you can use LaTeX with your method since it makes text boxes.

[James Yu]

I guess in your code:

%make sure the rotation is in the range 0:360 (brute force method)
while rot>360
    rot=rot-360;
end
while rot<0
    rot=rot+360;
end

can be simplified as

rot = mod(rot,360);

[shawnta zaghotah]

you should have more pictures of these ticks but labeled pictures...

[Fred Glass]

This program will sometimes change my plots such that my titles are mislocated.

[jimmy tsai]

thank you this is useful for bar plots.
Matlab should have put in that option the first place.

[Angela Seyss]

 

[Ricky]

put in the following "if statement" to check if there are yticks enabled.

if numel(c) > 0
    if rot<180
        th=text(b,repmat(c(1)-.1*(c(2)-c(1)),length(b),1),a,'HorizontalAlignment','right','rotation',rot);
    else
        th=text(b,repmat(c(1)-.1*(c(2)-c(1)),length(b),1),a,'HorizontalAlignment','left','rotation',rot);
    end
else
    if rot<180
        th=text(b,repmat(-.1,length(b),1),a,'HorizontalAlignment','right','rotation',rot,'fontsize',16);
    else
        th=text(b,repmat(-.1,length(b),1),a,'HorizontalAlignment','left','rotation',rot,'fontsize',16);
    end
end

[Patrick]

If the y axis is log scale this code will put the new x tickmarks in thw wrong place. Replace "c(1)-.1*(c(2)-c(1))" with the variable "yoffset" and add the following before the text commands to fix the problem:

%get the y axis scale type
yst = get(h,'YScale');
%set up new y location based on scale type of y axis
if strcmp(yst,'log')
    c = log10(c)/10;
    yoffset = 10^(c(1)-.1*(c(2)-c(1)));
else
    yoffset = c(1)-.1*(c(2)-c(1));
end
 
If your x ticks are 10^something, you can put those back by adding this before the text commands:

%fix for tick lables with exponents
xst = get(h,'XScale');
if strcmp(xst,'log')
   a = [repmat('10^{',length(a),1) a repmat('}',length(a),1)];
end

[Quentin]

Did not work for me. Always got error "There is no 'XTickLabel' property in the 'lineseries' class." , for plot, errorbar or bar. Little documentation provided.

[Thodoris Papadopoulos]

It was very helpful code for plot with dates.
simple example
y=(1:4);
x=(1:4);
figure(1)
plot(y,x)
set(gca,'XTick',1:4)
set(gca,'XTickLabel',{'date','date','date','date'})
th=rotateticklabel(gca,45);

[Hastiepen]

Perfect; very easy to use and is exactly what I needed, thank you very much!

[Marissa]

 

[d c]

log fix didn't work for me

[Dymitr Ruta]

The placement of XTickLabels is very messy if Y ticks are irregularly spaced or do not start at YMin, so instead of placing ticklabels at c(1)-0.1... change it to ymin(1)-0.1... where ymin=get(h,'YLim')

[Koray]

 

[Jaroslaw Tuszynski]

Function did not work correctly for labeling images, but I was able to modify it to work

[Wlodek Tych]

So far so good - does exactly what it says on the tin.

I have not tried _all_ the odd combinations and uses, but then if you use Matlab in-depth and manage to crash it, you should be able to help the developer. Why complain? Just make it better instead.

Also, the Author says the procedure rotates X axis labels then why complain that it does not do Y axis? Someone helps you by publishing their work ... OK, I feel a rant coming so I'll finish now.

Many thanks to Andrew!

[Hakon]

Thanks Andrew, this is extremely helpful. It seems to have a little issue when using subplot and applying rotation to all axes. (e.g. subplot(3,2,x) and then applying roration to each of the subplots - for some plots the text just disappears. R2010b)

[Haim]

 

[marcelo]

For my graphs, I had an error that reads

Because my graph had too many horizontal categories, Matlab automatically changes the axis step to a value different than 1. In this case, this code doesn't work.

I had to include after the line 46 the following command to make it work

[x y]=size(a);ticks=1; for j=2:x, ticks=horzcat(ticks,j); end, set(h,'XTick',ticks);

[Hakon]

Marcelo - thanks - I had that same problem, your fix solved it.

[Ilmira]

very helpful function. thank you!

simple example of using with months:

startDate = datenum ('01-2009','mm-yyyy')
endDate = datenum('10-2010','mm-yyyy')
date = linspace(startDate,endDate,22);
plot(date, sRate), grid
set(gca,'XTick',date)
datetick('x','mmmyy','keepticks')
rotateticklabel(gca, 45)

[Jonathan C. Lansey]

Great! I modified it to keep the specified axis fontsize with the following:
% Add this line:
fsize = get(h,'fontsize');

% Modify this line to add 'fontsize',fsize

th=text(b,repmat(c(1)-.1*(c(2)-c(1)),length(b),1),a,'HorizontalAlignment','right','rotation',rot,'fontsize',fsize);

[Bencatx]

 

[Martin]

Is there anyway to get this to work on subplots?

[Chris Taylor]

Seems great, although it sometimes rotates axes off the visible section of the plot!

[noosa]

I have this error when I tried to run the program : rotateticklabel(gca,45);
 ??? Undefined function or method 'rotateticklabel' for input arguments of type 'double'.
please there is someone who can help to correct this error?? Thanks !
    

[Yannick]

You may want to add the parameters

,'Parent',h

to the end of the 'text' commands in order not to rely on the value of gca.