In Matplotlib, it's not too tough to make a legend (example_legend(), below), but I think it's better style to put labels right on the curves being plotted (as in example_inline(), below). This can be very fiddly, because I have to specify coordinates by hand, and, if I re-format the plot, I probably have to reposition the labels. Is there a way to automatically generate labels on curves in Matplotlib? Bonus points for being able to orient the text at an angle corresponding to the angle of the curve.
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
def example_legend():
plt.clf()
x = np.linspace(0, 1, 101)
y1 = np.sin(x * np.pi / 2)
y2 = np.cos(x * np.pi / 2)
plt.plot(x, y1, label='sin')
plt.plot(x, y2, label='cos')
plt.legend()
def example_inline():
plt.clf()
x = np.linspace(0, 1, 101)
y1 = np.sin(x * np.pi / 2)
y2 = np.cos(x * np.pi / 2)
plt.plot(x, y1, label='sin')
plt.plot(x, y2, label='cos')
plt.text(0.08, 0.2, 'sin')
plt.text(0.9, 0.2, 'cos')
5 Answers
Update: User cphyc has kindly created a Github repository for the code in this answer (see here), and bundled the code into a package which may be installed using pip install matplotlib-label-lines.
Pretty Picture:
In matplotlib it's pretty easy to label contour plots (either automatically or by manually placing labels with mouse clicks). There does not (yet) appear to be any equivalent capability to label data series in this fashion! There may be some semantic reason for not including this feature which I am missing.
Regardless, I have written the following module which takes any allows for semi-automatic plot labelling. It requires only numpy and a couple of functions from the standard math library.
Description
The default behaviour of the labelLines function is to space the labels evenly along the x axis (automatically placing at the correct y-value of course). If you want you can just pass an array of the x co-ordinates of each of the labels. You can even tweak the location of one label (as shown in the bottom right plot) and space the rest evenly if you like.
In addition, the label_lines function does not account for the lines which have not had a label assigned in the plot command (or more accurately if the label contains '_line').
Keyword arguments passed to labelLines or labelLine are passed on to the text function call (some keyword arguments are set if the calling code chooses not to specify).
