Styling

Kaxe figures are styled through an attribute map on every window. Use kaxe.AttrMap.style() to change appearance, kaxe.AttrMap.help() to list all keys for the current window, and kaxe.Window.theme() or kaxe.Window.adjust() for LaTeX-friendly sizing.

How styles work

Each window owns an kaxe.AttrMap. Style keys are grouped by scope:

  • Global keys — fontSize, width, height, color, backgroundColor, outerPadding

  • Object-scoped keys — use dot notation, e.g. marker.tickWidth, marker.tickLength

Pass styles as keyword arguments or in a dict:

plt.style(fontSize=80, lineWidth=4)
plt.style({"marker.tickWidth": 6, "marker.tickLength": 40})

Call kaxe.AttrMap.help() on any window to print defaults for that plot type:

plt.help()

Common global styles

Key

Default (typical)

Effect

width

2500

Output image width in pixels

height

2000

Output image height in pixels

fontSize

50

Base font size for labels and math

color

black

Default foreground color (RGBA tuple or hex string, e.g. "#000000")

backgroundColor

white

Canvas background (RGBA tuple or hex string)

outerPadding

[50, 50, 50, 50]

Padding around the plot area: left, bottom, top, right

Plot-specific styles

Cartesian plots (kaxe.Plot, kaxe.BoxedPlot):

  • xNumbers, yNumbers — number of tick marks on each axis (None = automatic)

Polar plots (kaxe.PolarPlot):

  • rNumbers — radial tick count

3D plots (kaxe.Plot3D and variants):

  • xNumbers, yNumbers, zNumbers — axis tick counts

  • wireframeLinewidth — box frame line width

  • backgroundColorBackdrop, axisLineColorBackdrop — 3D backdrop colors

Bar charts (kaxe.Bar, kaxe.GroupBar):

  • rotateLabel — label rotation in degrees

  • barGap, barGapProc, barSmallGapProc — spacing between bars

  • barColor — override default bar color

Pie charts (kaxe.Pie):

  • circleSizeProcent — fraction of canvas used by the pie

  • phaseshift — rotation offset in degrees

  • gap — gap between slices

Marker and axis styles

Axis ticks and grid lines use the marker scope:

plt.style({"marker.tickWidth": 6, "marker.tickLength": 50})
plt.style({"marker.gridlineColor": (0, 0, 0, 80)})

Useful marker keys:

  • marker.tickWidth, marker.tickLength — axis tick appearance

  • marker.gridlineColor, marker.gridlineWidth — grid lines

  • marker.showNumber, marker.showTick, marker.showLine — visibility toggles

Colors

Colors accept RGBA tuples (red, green, blue, alpha) with values 0–255, or hex strings such as "#FF5154". Named CSS colors ("red", "white", …) also work wherever colors are accepted.

plt.style(color="#000000", backgroundColor="#ffffff")
func = kaxe.Function2D(lambda x: x, color="#DE6B48")
plt.add(func)

Use kaxe.to_rgba() to normalize any supported input to an RGBA tuple.

Default plot colors cycle automatically. Control the cycle with:

Gradients on surfaces and contours use kaxe.Colormap / kaxe.Colormaps — see Utilities.

Themes and adjust

Themes apply a preset dict of styles tuned for A4 LaTeX pages:

plt.theme(kaxe.Themes.A4Medium)

Available presets: A4Large, A4Medium, A4Small, A4Slim, A4Mini. See kaxe.Themes for exact values.

adjust scales width, height, font size, and axis tick counts (xNumbers, yNumbers) from a target fraction of page width:

plt.adjust(0.5)  # about half a text column

Optional parameters: documentFontSize, documentMarginProcent, documentWidth, imageSlimRatio.

Grids

On kaxe.Grid, fontSize, color, and axis tick counts (xNumbers, yNumbers, and zNumbers for 3D cells) apply to the shared legend and every subplot cell when the grid is exported. Set them on the grid only; per-plot values on cells are overridden at bake time.

Use kaxe.Grid.adjust() with the same API as single plots. Tick targets are computed from each cell’s pixel size after the grid layout is divided, so subplots keep multiple grid lines instead of a single marker interval.

grid = kaxe.Grid()
grid.adjust(0.5)
grid.addRow(p1, p2, p3)

grid = kaxe.Grid()
grid.style(width=3000, height=1000, fontSize=100)
grid.theme(kaxe.Themes.A4Medium)  # same presets as single plots
grid.addRow(p1, p2, p3)

Per-object colors and widths

Many objects accept constructor arguments that override global styles:

kaxe.Function2D(lambda x: x**2, width=8, color=(6, 71, 137, 255))
kaxe.Points2D([1, 2, 3], [1, 4, 9], size=30, symbol=kaxe.symbol.CIRCLE)

See Objects for parameters on each object class.