Page 101 - A Guide to MATLAB for Beginners and Experienced Users
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82        Chapter 5: MATLAB Graphics


                       >> set(gca, ’FontName’, ’Symbol’)
                       >> set(gca, ’XTickLabel’, ’-2p|-p|0|p|2p’)

                     since in the Symbol font, π occupies the slot held by p in text fonts.


           Full-Fledged Customization

                     What about changes to other aspects of a plot? The useful commands get and
                     set can be used to obtain a complete list of the properties of a graphics window,
                     and then to modify them. These properties are arranged in a hierarchical
                     structure, identified by markers (which are simply numbers) called handles.
                     If you type get(gcf), you will “get” a (rather long) list of properties of the
                     current figure (whose number is returned by the function gcf). Some of these
                     might read

                                Color = [0.8 0.8      0.8]
                                CurrentAxes = [72.0009]
                                PaperSize = [8.5 11]
                                Children = [72.0009]

                     Here PaperSize is self-explanatory; Color gives the background color of the
                     plot in RGB (red-green-blue) coordinates, where [0 0 0] is black and [1 1 1]
                     is white. ([0.8 0.8 0.8] is light gray.) Note that CurrentAxes and Children
                     in this example have the same value, the one-element vector containing the
                     funny-looking number 72.0009. This number would also be returned by the
                     command gca (“get current axes”); it is the handle to the axis properties of
                     the plot. The fact that this also shows up under Children indicates that the
                     axis properties are “children” of the figure, this is, they lie one level down in the
                     hierarchical structure. Typing get(gca) or get(72.0009) would then give
                     you a list of axis properties, including further Children suchas Line objects,
                     within which you would find the XData and YData encoding the actual plot.
                       Once you have located the properties you’re interested in, they can be
                     changed with set. For example,

                       >> set(gcf, ’Color’, [1       0  0])

                     changes the background color of the border of the figure window to red, and
                       >> set(gca, ’Color’, [1       1  0])

                     changes the background color of the plot itself (a child of the figure window)
                     to yellow (which in the RGB scheme is half red, half green).
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