MATLAB: Is ‘.-‘ no longer a valid line format for plots

line propertiesplot

Formerly, the command

>> plot(1:10,'.-')

created a LineStyle with prominent dots as markers, connected by lines. In 2011b (on a Mac), there are no dots. I have to increase the MarkerSize property of the line to get the dots to show.

Bug, or feature? I didn't find mention of this change in the Release Notes.

Best Answer

I ultimately contacted MathWorks support for this question, and found the definitive answer.

It turns out that for my high-resolution monitor, the "ScreenPixelsPerInch" had a default value of 72, which was causing the plot symbols to be rendered in a way that they did not show up on the screen. The dots "existed", but were not rendered visibly on the monitor. (They did show up in the saved/printed output.)

I was able to fix the issue by slightly increasing the value of ScreenPixelsPerInch:

 >> set(0,'ScreenPixelsPerInch',76)

I put that line in my startup.m file, and all is well.

Related Solutions

MATLAB: MatlabR2014b no more circle market type in plot

'o' is not a linestyle, it's a marker. Perhaps you were doing this before

plot(A(i,j), 'bo-');

MATLAB: Does LineWidth not change when I set the LineWidth property of the plot

This issue has to do with the fundamental resolution of your screen. Based on the description of the linewidth property:

 <http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/ref/line_props.html>

Which says that 1 point = 1/72 inches. We also know that the ScreenPixelsPerInch which is a fundamental property of your screen can be found by performing a GET operation as follows:

get(0,'ScreenPixelsPerInch')

With this information you can obtain Pixels/Point [Dividing Pix/Inch by Points/Inch].

So for the change in Line Width to occur the number of Pixels/Point would need to be a whole pixel before change is noticed.

Illustrative Example:

close all
subplot(2,1,1)
h1 = plot(1:10);
set(h1,'LineWidth',1.1)
subplot(2,1,2)
h2 = plot(1:10);
Line_Width = 1.0;
for i = 1:100
      clc
      Pixels_Per_Point = (get(0,'ScreenPixelsPerInch')/72);
      subplot(2,1,2)
      set(h2,'LineWidth',Line_Width)
      Pixel_Width_Pts = Pixels_Per_Point*Line_Width
      Line_Width   = Line_Width + 0.1
      pause
end

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: MatlabR2014b no more circle market type in plot

MATLAB: Does LineWidth not change when I set the LineWidth property of the plot

Related Question