Introduction

WARNING: Since 5.0.beta2 EzTemplate is part of the vcsaddons package

EzTemplate is designed to help users easily create templates they use to generate plots in VCS.

EzTemplate's first sub-package, Multi, is designed to create templates for multiple plots per page.

EzTemplate is easy to use in a two step process:

1. Initialize the object and set up values to use.
2. Get the VCS template object.

All EzTemplate objects have a preview method that generates a .gif file illustrating positions of plots.

In the following examples we only use the preview method, but we show (commented out) an example line on how to use the template in VCS. In the examples, "s" is the variable to be plotted and "iso" is the graphics method that would be used to display "s".

The Multi Object

Definitions

Multi object allows the user to display multiple plots on a single page.

In Version 1 a few assumption are made:

• The legend is either at the bottom or on the right side of the plot (always centered).

The VCS Canvas has multiple sections or attributes with default values indicated between parantheses

• Rows (3) and columns (2)
  

• The margins: top (0.05), bottom (0.075), left (0.033) and right (0.05)
  
• Parameter values indicate percentage (%) of the page.
  
• The bottom and right margins are used as space to display the global horizontal/vertical legend.
• The spacing: horizontal (0.05) and vertical (0.035)
  
• Spacing defines the space between two adjacent plots on a row or a column.
• Parameter values indicate percentage (%) of the page.
• The legend: direction ("horizontal"), thickness (0.2), stretch (0.8) and fat (0.05)
  
• Parameter values for thickness and stretch indicate percentage (%) of the space allocated for the legend bar.
• Direction of the legend bar can be "horizontal" or "vertical".
• Fat: only used for local (inside the grid) plots, the parameter value indicating percentage (%) of the grid space to use for the legend bar.
• The get function
  
• Creates and returns the template object associated wth the arguments row and column.
• If no row/column arguments are given, then get creates plots in order of each call, the plots being drawn starting from top left, going right then down.
• legend keyword can be passed as "local", indicating that this specific plot needs to have a legend associated with it. This reduces the area allocated for the data plotting itself, and the direction of the legend will be that of the legend.direction attribute at the time the function is called.
• The preview function
• Generates the templates (if none already generated with a call to get) and outputs a preview result to the file specified by the out keyword.
  

Examples

In this example we simply plot three columns and four rows:

from vcsaddons import EzTemplate
import vcs

## Initialize VCS
x=vcs.init()

M=EzTemplate.Multi(rows=4,columns=3)

for i in range(12):
    t=M.get()
##     x.plot(s[i],t,iso)
M.preview('test')
raw_input('Done')

In this example show how to plot a legend on the side of each individual plot:

from vcsaddons import EzTemplate
import vcs

## Initialize VCS
x=vcs.init()

M=EzTemplate.Multi(rows=4,columns=3)
M.legend.direction='vertical'
for i in range(12):
    t=M.get(legend='local')
##     x.plot(s[i],t,iso)
M.preview('test2')

In this example we show how to draw a horizontal legend bar for each row:

from vcsaddons import EzTemplate
import vcs
## 12 plot one legend per row

## Initialize VCS
x=vcs.init()

M=EzTemplate.Multi(rows=4,columns=3)
M.legend.stretch=2.5 # 250% of width (for middle one)
for i in range(12):
    t=M.get(legend='local')
    if i%3 !=1:
        t.legend.priority=0 # Turn off legend
##     x.plot(s[i],t,iso)
M.preview('test3')
raw_input('Done')

In this example we show how to draw one legend per row, vertically:

from vcsaddons import EzTemplate
import vcs
## 12 plots 1 legend per row on the right
## Initialize VCS
x=vcs.init()

M=EzTemplate.Multi(rows=4,columns=3)
M.legend.direction='vertical'
for i in range(12):
    t=M.get(legend='local')
    if i%3 !=2:
        t.legend.priority=0 # Turn off legend
##     x.plot(s[i],t,iso)
M.preview('test3b')
raw_input('Done')

In this example we show how to control margins and legend thickness:

from vcsaddons import EzTemplate
import vcs
## 12 plot playing with margins and legend thickness

## Initialize VCS
x=vcs.init()

M=EzTemplate.Multi(rows=4,columns=3)
M.margins.top=.25
M.margins.bottom=.25
M.margins.left=.25
M.margins.right=.25

## The legend uses the bottom margin for display are
## We need to "shrink it"
M.legend.thickness=.1
for i in range(12):
    t=M.get()
##     x.plot(s[i],t,iso)
M.preview('test4')

raw_input('Done')

In this example we show how to control margins and legend direction:

from vcsaddons import EzTemplate
import vcs
## Initialize VCS
x=vcs.init()

M=EzTemplate.Multi(rows=4,columns=3)
M.margins.top=.25
M.margins.bottom=.25
M.margins.left=.25
M.margins.right=.25

M.legend.direction='vertical'
## The legend uses the right margin for display are
## We need to "shrink it"
M.legend.thickness=.05
for i in range(12):
    t=M.get()
##     x.plot(s[i],t,iso)
M.preview('test5')
raw_input('Done')

In this example we show how to mix local and global legends, and how to alternate the direction of the local legend bars:

from vcsaddons import EzTemplate
import vcs

## Initialize VCS
x=vcs.init()

M=EzTemplate.Multi(rows=4,columns=3)
for i in range(12):
    if i%2==1:
        if i%4 == 3:
            M.legend.direction='vertical'
        t=M.get(legend='local')
        M.legend.direction='horizontal'
    else:
        t=M.get()
    #x.plot(s[i],t,iso)
M.preview('test6')
raw_input('Done')

In this example we show how to draw templates in a different order (reversed for this example):

from vcsaddons import EzTemplate
import vcs

## Initialize VCS
x=vcs.init()

M=EzTemplate.Multi(rows=4,columns=3)

icol=3
irow=4
for i in range(12):
    if i % 3 == 0:
        irow-=1
    icol-=1
    t=M.get(column=icol,row=irow)
#    x.plot(s[11-i],t,iso)
    if icol==0 : icol=3
M.preview('test7')
raw_input('Done')

In this example we show how to control the spacing parameter:

from vcsaddons import EzTemplate
import vcs

## Initialize VCS
x=vcs.init()
iso=x.createisofill('test')
iso.levels=vcs.mkscale(0.,100.)
iso.fillareacolors=vcs.getcolors(iso.levels)

M=EzTemplate.Multi(rows=4,columns=3)
M.spacing.horizontal=.25
M.spacing.vertical=.1
M.preview('test8')
raw_input('Done')