Section Summary

This section outlines how to add an embedded plot component to a worksheet.

In a new Maple worksheet, choose the Plot component from the Components palette:  

The inserted component will look similar to the Plot component to the right. Notice that the Plot component does not contain any plots and displays as an empty box.

Section Summary

Every embedded component has attributes that determine its appearance and contents. For Plot components, this includes properties such as name, size (in pixel width and pixel height), contents (value) and more. This section, outlines how you can gather information about and pass information to the Plot component.

It's important to note how you can pass and retrieve information about properties to and from embedded components. As you saw in the previous section, inserted Plot components do not contain any plots by default, so one of the first tasks you have is to add a plot to the Plot component. To do so, you first need to know where to send information about our plot.

All embedded components have an identity, known as name. To find the name of the plot component:

From the pop-up, you can observe that this particular Plot component has the name 'Plot0'. The pop-up also lists other attributes of the component such as tooltip, pixel width or pixel height, and the display of the plot border.

In order to programmatically send (or retrieve) information to the Plot component, you can use the DocumentTools:-SetProperty (or DocumentTools:-GetProperty) commands.

For example, the SetProperty command is used to set the pixel height of the Plot component Plot0:

$\mathrm{DocumentTools}:-\mathrm{SetProperty}\left(''Plot0''\, \mathit{pixelHeight}\, 100\right)$

Similarly, to get the pixelHeight of the Plot component, the GetProperty command is used:

$\mathrm{DocumentTools}:-\mathrm{GetProperty}\left(''Plot0''\, \mathit{pixelHeight}\right)$

The value property contains information on the current plot.

$\mathrm{DocumentTools}:-\mathrm{GetProperty}\left(''Plot0''\, \mathit{value}\right)$

Since inserted plot components do not have a value by default, an error is returned as there is no value to retrieve. In order to send a plot to the Plot component, the value option can be set by passing a valid plot, such as plot(sin) to the Plot component:

$\mathrm{DocumentTools}:-\mathrm{SetProperty}\left(''Plot0''\,\mathit{value}\, \mathrm{plot}\left(\sin \right)\right)$

Section Summary

Action code is added to embedded components in Maple to drive actions in Maple documents. This section, describes the steps needed to write Maple code that creates a point plot with a single point, similar to the following:

In later sections, you will add this code to the Plot component in order to interactively plot a point.

axis

tickmarks

The axis option can control the color of the y-axis:

$\mathrm{plots}:-\mathrm{pointplot}\left(\left[\right]\, \mathit{axis}\left[\mathbf{2}\right]\mathbf{ }\mathbf{\=}\mathbf{ }\left[\mathit{color}\mathbf{\=}''White''\right]\right)\;$

Using 0 as the value for the y-tickmarks means that no tickmarks are shown:

$\mathrm{plots}:-\mathrm{pointplot}\left(\left[\right]\,\mathit{tickmarks}\mathbf{ }\mathbf{\=}\mathbf{ }\left[\left[\mathit{seq}\left(\mathbf{-}\mathbf{5}\mathbf{ }\mathbf{..}\mathbf{ }\mathbf{5}\right)\right]\mathbf{\,} 0\right]\right)\;$

Section Summary

Plot components have properties that describe their characteristics such as size and value. Plot components can also hold information about interaction with the plot, such as the x,y values of clicks on the plot. In this section, you will learn how to retrieve information on mouse clicks on the Plot component.

In section 2, you saw that the DocumentTools:-GetProperty command can retrieve information about properties of a component.

$\mathrm{DocumentTools}:-\mathrm{GetProperty}\left(''Plot1''\, \mathit{pixelWidth}\right)$

For Plot components, this information also includes details on the x,y click position of the last click on the plot, referred to as the properties clickx and clicky.

In order to be able to be able to capture clicks on Plot components, you must first enable the click on plot ability. To do so:

When Click and Drag is activated, the DocumentTools:-GetProperty command can be used to retrieve the position of the last click.

$\mathrm{DocumentTools}:-\mathrm{GetProperty}\left(''Plot1''\,\mathit{clickx}\right)$

Notice that our component name changed in this example. This is because you added a new Plot component for this section and any new Plot component must have a unique new name.

Section Summary

In this section, you will use the techniques outlined in the previous sections in order to build an interactive number line. This is accomplished by:

Let's start by combining the results of section 2 and 3 in order to send a plot to the plot component. Also note that you have already changed the height of the Plot component and turned on 'Click and Drag' using the right-click 'Component Properties' pop-up (as per section 4).

The name of the component to the right is Plot2.

$\mathrm{DocumentTools}:-\mathrm{SetProperty}\left( ''Plot2''\, \mathrm{value}\,\mathrm{plots}:-\mathrm{pointplot}\left(\left[1\,0\right]\,\mathrm{tickmarks} \= \left[\left[\mathrm{seq}\left(-5 .. 5\right)\right]\, 0\right]\, \mathrm{view}\=\left[-5..5\,-1..1\right]\,\mathrm{symbol}\=\mathrm{solidcircle}\, \mathrm{symbolsize}\=25\right)\right)$

In order to update our plot to register click actions, you now need to add click action code to the Plot component. To do so:

This brings up a code editor that allows you to edit the code that is run at the event of a mouse click.

The added code simply creates a pointplot with a point at [1,0], so you need to use the code from section 4 in order to update the plot. To do so,

$\mathrm{DocumentTools}:-\mathrm{GetProperty}\left(''Plot2''\, \mathrm{clickx}\right)$

If you were interested in registering and changing values on the y-axis as well, you would repeat this step only changing the '0' with a similar GetProperty command on the clicky property.

You should now have a working clickable number line! Since all of the code for this component is contained in the plot component, you can even copy and paste the component on the right into a new worksheet and interact with it.