Is it possible to add Plot Edit Toolbar functionality to a GUI?

I am creating a data visualization GUI, and I'd like to add the ability for the users to annotate the plots as they wish. The 'Plot Edit Toolbar' menu option would be perfect.

Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

[Patrick Kalita]

Well, this is a little sneaky, but you can try this if you absolutely need to have this functionality. First, you can find the menu item with the "Plot Edit Toolbar" label and look at it's Callback property:

f = figure;
M = findall(f, 'Label', '&Plot Edit Toolbar');
get(M, 'Callback')

Now that you know what it's doing, you can call the same function that its using in your GUI.

I think we're getting into somewhat "undocumented" functionality here, so the standard warning about that (functionality could change in a future release without warning, etc.) applies here.

[Matthew Schroeder]

Beautiful! Thank you very much!

Can you think of a way to prevent the user from being able to move contents around on the GUI figure while they are annotating?

[Fangjun Jiang]

This is nice, Patrick. Is there a way to find out the actual function (.m or .p file) for the Callback? Your code above returns the string below. I'd like to know the actual function.

ans =

viewmenufcn PloteditToolbar

[Patrick Kalita]

@Matthew, you might want to post a new question about that.

@Fangjun, the name of the function is 'viewmenufcn'. It is being given a string input argument 'PloteditToolbar'. It is equivalent to viewmenufcn('PloteditToolbar')

[Jan]

The profiler can help to find the applied callback. Start the profile, hit the menu function, inspect the profiler report for the used functions.

=> plotedit(FigH, 'plotedittoolbar', 'toggle')

[Fangjun Jiang]

Thanks, Patrick. The reason I am asking is to see if there is an hidden API to use the interactive Brush functionality. Do you see a possibility? See this post. http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/11439-selecting-data-from-a-plot-in-a-gui

Answer 2

[Jan]

The toolbar of a figure is disabled, if an UICONTROL is created. But you can enable it manually:

figure('Toolbar', 'figure');
uicontrol('Style', 'Pushbutton');

Or if you use GUIDE to create the figure, you can enable the toolbar in the CreateFcn also.

[Fangjun Jiang]

Nice, Jan. Where did you get that?

[Jan]

E.g. from the PLOTEDIT function. See also : http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/uicontrol-side-effect-removing-figure-toolbar/

[Matthew Schroeder]

I use GUIDE to create the figure, as well as specifying which toolbar options I want to add (pan, zoom, data cursor, etc). I tried adding

set(handles.figure1,'toolbar','figure');

to the opening function, but it doesn't add the toolbar I want. I want it to add the toolbar that you get when you go to

View > Plot Edit Toolbar

from a figure that is not in a GUI (annotation tools). I don't necessarily want the users to have complete ability to edit the plots, just to be able to anotate them.

Thank you in advance!

[B_Richardson]

I am trying to do something very similar let me know if you come up with a solution!

[mechE]

Please post the solution

[Lucie S.]

This is working for me. In your guide, right click on your figure (outside the plots)--> view callbaks--> Create Fcn. Then in the function created in your .m file add the code as below:

%%%%%

function figure1_CreateFcn(hObject, eventdata, handles)

% hObject handle to figure1 (see GCBO)

set(hObject ,'Toolbar','figure');

%%%%%

This sentence also works (I don't see the difference): set(hObject,'Menubar','figure');