observablehq / observablehq/plot

Symlog Ticks

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#1,817 1 comment 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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enhancement
Dominant language
HTML
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Description

Plot does a great job automatically producing an informative "context" around the chart, including great defaults for ticks and tick labels in a variety of situations. There are some areas where I reliably decide to modify the defaults, though, and one of them is with a symlog scale.

Here's a demo of the current default ticks for a chart with a symlog y axis:

image

For comparison, I think the default axis settings for a log scale are more informative, and include ticks that show values along the full value range:

image

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the linked demo and compare the current symlog y-axis ticks with the log-scale example shown in the issue. Trace how the chart chooses default ticks for symlog scales. Done means the symlog axis shows informative ticks across the full value range, comparable to the log-scale defaults.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
d3
Domain
data-visualization
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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