[ANN] MakiePublication.jl: Creating publication-quality figures with Makie

Package Announcements
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MakiePublication.jl is a Julia package for producing publication-quality figures based on Makie.jl. It aims to provide equivalent functionalities as the Python package mpltex.

Features:

  • Provide a collection of custom themes for journal publishers: ACS, APS, RSC.
  • Custom theme for making figures suitable for web pages.
  • 15 color palettes based on well-known quality color schemes with special tweaked ordering for scientific publishing. (since v0.3.0)
  • Support hollow markers. (since v0.3.1)

I hope this package will be useful for someone here. Comments and PRs are extremely welcome. Thanks!

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by the name of it, would you support contribution that adds field-specific themes?

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Why separate and not integrated into Makie? What about being standard Makie themes?

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well, GitHub - MakieOrg/MakieThemes.jl: Themes for Makie was last updated in 2020.

Realistically, you probably don’t want to “breaking change” every time someone changes theme in one of the 200 themes people use

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It doesn’t need to be the default theme, but if that’s the themes package, why not add it there, and add it to the Makie documentation as “a theme for publication-type plots”? That’s non-breaking and would be much more visible.

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That theme package is unmaintained, all the working themes are in Makie itself currently.

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yeah, so if these are in Makie itself, and some themes get changed, is that a breaking change now?

I mean we just run into the same argument regarding “why split libraries from part of Julia” – because we want to separately update them without breaking users shit

also think about the compile time and time to sysimage, this is Makie we’re talking about after all!

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As stated by @jling, I also don’t think it is a good idea to include all things in the Makie package. Especially for theming, it brings too many biases by the theme author. Makie itself should focus on providing fundamental drawing tools.

Currently, the most wanted feature of Makie by MakiePublication is to provide a sans-serif LaTeX math font that can be used with the Helvetica font by normal labels and texts.

Another cool feature I want to see in Makie is to provide a list of hollow markers drawn by BezierPath corresponding to currently used solid ones. Although MakiePublication can draw hollow markers through a hack, I really don’t appreciate it.

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Maybe its just me, but plots with different themes in readme and documentation look exactly the same.
Am I missing something?

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Yes, they are basically the same. The only difference among those figures is the actual physical size for printing as required by different journal publishers. The theme, however, is based on my personal preference which of course still follows the guidelines of journal publishers.

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Right, makes sense.
Coming from a different discipline, did not expect that the physical size would be in a figure guideline. :slight_smile:

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The Makie themes only change colors etc, not figure size, because it doesn’t make sense to tangle those up together. You can however merge themes together, and could combine the color themes with those specifying figure sizes you’re likely to need.