topic Re: Long labels on a grouped barchart in Graphics Programming

Long labels on a grouped barchart

Jennys — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:17:08 GMT

Hi

I have a grouped bar chart where one of the axis has very long labels. The labels are cut and replaced by ...

I saw that there is an option tickvaluefitpolicy = rotate, but I am not sure where to put the option. I have tried on the colaxis, but it doesn´t work.

Any suggestions?

Tks
Jenny

Here is an example:

data test;
set sashelp.prdsale;
if region = 'EAST' then text = 'This is the first really long ';
else text = 'This is the second really long';
output;
if region = 'EAST' then text = 'This is the third really long';
else text = 'This is the fourth really long';
output;

run;

proc sgpanel data=test;
where year=1993;
panelby text / onepanel
novarname noborder
layout=columnlattice
colheaderpos=bottom;
rowaxis label="Sales";
colaxis display=none;
vbar product / response=actual
group=product;
keylegend / position=right;
run;

Re: Long labels on a grouped barchart

Cynthia_sas — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:43:14 GMT

Hi:
I think that "tickvaluefitpolicy" may belong to the Graph Template Language. If you look at the COLAXIS doc, you will find a FITPOLICY option:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/grstatproc/61948/HTML/default/panelaxis-stmt.htm

FITPOLICY only comes into play when/if the axis labels don't fit. (FITPOLICY has no impact on the PANELBY text.) So, for example, if I modify your program to use FITPOLICY, it will only rotate the axis value labels if they are too long to fit (which I forced them to be too long with a user-defined format.)

When I use a too long PANELBY value, then I do see the ... ellipsis if the text is too long. I used a variety of different strings and you can see that the number of characters in the PANELBY cell will depend on how wide the letters/numbers are and how many characters will fit, based on the current font being used. You could probably change the font being used for the PANELBY text with a style template change, but I fear that you will run the risk of having the text too small to read.

cynthia
[pre]
data test;
set sashelp.prdsale;
if region = 'EAST' then text = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890';
else text = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890';
output;
if region = 'EAST' then text = 'xyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxyxy1234567890';
else text = '1234567890123456789012345678901234567890';
output;
run;

proc format;
value $lprd 'BED' = 'LONGBED'
'SOFA' = 'LONGSOFA'
'CHAIR' = 'LONGCHAIR'
'TABLE' = 'LONGTABLE'
'DESK' = 'LONGDESK';
run;

proc sgpanel data=test;
title '1) With FITPOLICY';
where year=1993;
panelby text / novarname;
rowaxis label="Sales";
colaxis fitpolicy=rotate;
vbar product / response=actual
group=product;
keylegend / position=right;
format product $lprd.;
run;
[/pre]

Re: Long labels on a grouped barchart

GraphGuy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:17:13 GMT

You could use good-old traditional gchart, instead 🙂
And in v9.2, gchart even supports >32-character bar/midpoint text.
Here is some code to do the similar plot:

axis1 label=none value=none;
axis2 label=none value=(j=right);

proc gchart data=test (where=(year=1993));
hbar product / type=sum sumvar=actual nostats
subgroup=product maxis=axis1 gaxis=axis2
group=text space=0;
run;