Visualisation

Notes
Colour
Links

Notes

Miter joins

This is what you want to search when you are annoyed by line segments not meeting up cleanly when you have thicker lines.

File formats

Abbreviation	Full name	Vector/Raster
EPS	Encapsulated PostScript	Vector
PDF	Portable Document Format	Vector
SVG	Scalable Vector Graphics	Vector
TIFF	Tag Image File Format	Raster

inkscape and convert are two command line tools for converting between vector and raster formats respectively.

Paper sizes

Paper	Width	Height
A4	210mm	297mm
A5	148mm	210mm
A6	105mm	148mm
A7	74mm	105mm

Font sizes

For figures, the axis and legend titles should be 10pt (not italic or bold), the axis and legend text should be 9pt. Setting this in pt will make the results consistent provided you save to the true size of the figure.

You can comfortably fit a 1x3 grid of plots on A4 with text of size 9–10pt, if each plot is of size 50x60mm.

Colour

ColorBrewer2 palettes

You can download a GIMP colour palette .gpl files and load them into your editor of choice:

https://colorbrewer2.org/export/gpl/Dark2_8.gpl

Colour picker

You can use Gpick to get the hex codes for colours on your screen or an image. Note that Gpick only works with X11, if you are using Wayland, consider using Gcolor3 instead.

Colour blindness

For R users who want a drop-in solution for avoiding issues with limited colour perception there is colorBlindness, a package which automates the palette selection process.

Simple R colours

Here is a little snippet of R code that makes it easier to choose some basic colours.

## Define some hex codes to use as a colour scheme. These
## are from the ColorBrewer2 project:
## \code{https://colorbrewer2.org/}
my_colours <- list(
  truth = list(dark = "#d73027", light = "#fee090"),
  estimate = list(dark = "#4575b4", light = "#e0f3f8"),
  other = list(
    grey = list(
      light = "#e0e0e0",
      medium = "#999999",
      dark = "#4d4d4d"
    )
  )
)

Curated palettes

The ultimate resource for visualisations is colorbrewer2.

Solarized

WEBSITE of Ethan Schoonover the creator

Table 1: Solarized HEX codes
Colour	RGB
base03	#002b36
base02	#073642
base01	#586e75
base00	#657b83
base0	#839496
base1	#93a1a1
base2	#eee8d5
base3	#fdf6e3
yellow	#b58900
orange	#cb4b16
red	#dc322f
magenta	#d33682
violet	#6c71c4
blue	#268bd2
cyan	#2aa198
green	#859900

Here is a snippet to add to your CSS if you want to use it.

:root {
    --base03: #002b36;
    --base02: #073642;
    --base01: #586e75;
    --base00: #657b83;
    --base0: #839496;
    --base1: #93a1a1;
    --base2: #eee8d5;
    --base3: #fdf6e3;
    --yellow: #b58900;
    --orange: #cb4b16;
    --red: #dc322f;
    --magenta: #d33682;
    --violet: #6c71c4;
    --blue: #268bd2;
    --cyan: #2aa198;
    --green: #859900;
}

Or if you want to use it in LaTeX

\usepackage{xcolor}

\definecolor{base03}{HTML}{002b36}
\definecolor{base02}{HTML}{073642}
\definecolor{base01}{HTML}{586e75}
\definecolor{base00}{HTML}{657b83}
\definecolor{base0}{HTML}{839496}
\definecolor{base1}{HTML}{93a1a1}
\definecolor{base2}{HTML}{eee8d5}
\definecolor{base3}{HTML}{fdf6e3}
\definecolor{yellow}{HTML}{b58900}
\definecolor{orange}{HTML}{cb4b16}
\definecolor{red}{HTML}{dc322f}
\definecolor{magenta}{HTML}{d33682}
\definecolor{violet}{HTML}{6c71c4}
\definecolor{blue}{HTML}{268bd2}
\definecolor{cyan}{HTML}{2aa198}
\definecolor{green}{HTML}{859900}