color_swatch() font size problems with less than 9 colors

[abubelinha]

Hi. Great and very useful package!

I am testing black/white text thresholds by using color_swatch(), but for some reason it gets nuts when using less than 9 colors. In those cases, font sizes become huge and they don't fit inside colored boxes.

    import distinctipy, matplotlib.pyplot as plt
    colors = distinctipy.get_colors(8) # with less than 9 colors, color_swatch will use huge font sizes
    thresholds = [0.4,0.6]
    fig, axes = plt.subplots(len(thresholds), 1, figsize=(6, 6))
    for i,t in enumerate(thresholds):
        print(colors,"\n",textcolors)
        distinctipy.color_swatch(colors, show_text=True, ax=axes[i], title="text_threshold={}".format(t), text_threshold=t)
    plt.show()

That code is for 8 colors. I am using:

• python v. 3.8.7
• matplotlib v. 3.6.3
• distinctipy v. 1.2.3

This is my output for 2, 3, 8 and 9 colors:

2 colors:

3 colors:

8 colors:

9 colors:

Is there any way I can choose the font size to be used? Thanks @abubelinha

[jack89roberts]

Hi @abubelinha , I've released a new version (v1.3.1) that should both fix the bug with using it for fewer than 9 colours (hopefully), but also adds a fontsize argument so you can change it manually. Let me know if it works!

[abubelinha]

Thanks a lot. I tried a normal pip installation upgrade but it didn't change my version. I guess I must install from repository, correct? (I am not very used to that so I'll check my notes on how I did it in the past)

[abubelinha]

OK, I could upgrade it to 1.3.1 this way (just for my record):

pip install --upgrade https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/distinctipy/archive/master.zip

It works great now, except that default-size text goes beyond top when selecting just one color (nothing really important):

Still haven't tried fontsize argument but I'll do. Thanks a lot for your quick answer!!

[jack89roberts]

@abubelinha I think that should be fixed now too if you upgrade again (to 1.3.3), if not I'll re-open the issue as something to look into again in the future because I never really found a good solution for getting the sizing etc. right, it's pretty hacky. Thanks for posting the issue!

[abubelinha]

Thanks a lot. It works OK for my simple tests.

I find issues again with default font size when increasing the number of subplots: i.e. combining color_swatch(1), color_swatch(2) ... color_swatch(n) in the same plot. That's probably not a good idea and I am not really needed to do that (also, passing fontsize=8 solves the problem). I just want to let you know.

    import distinctipy, matplotlib.pyplot as plt
    maxcolors = 9
    fig, axes = plt.subplots(maxcolors, 1, figsize=(6, 6))
    for i in range(0,maxcolors):
        colors = distinctipy.get_colors(i+1)
        print(colors,"\n",textcolors)
        distinctipy.color_swatch(colors, show_text=True, ax=axes[i], title="colors={}".format(i+1), 
            text_threshold=0.5
            # , fontsize=8
            )
    plt.show()

maxcolors = 5

maxcolors = 9

[jack89roberts]

Ah ok, I'll leave this open but not something I'll get to fixing immediately, it needs a proper solution for scaling the fontsize to fit within the shapes, which isn't something matplotlib gives out the box as far as I know.