# Can Makie plot axis in "zebra style"?
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745
**Category:** Visualization
**Tags:** makie
**Created:** [July 15, 2025, 1:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745 "2025-07-15T13:41:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Ronis\_BR](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Ronis_BR)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 1:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/1 "2025-07-15T13:41:39Z")
Hi!
A design pattern very common when plotting maps is to use “zebra style” in the axes like this:
Is it possible to create this type of axes in Makie?
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### Author:  [@raman\_kumar](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/raman_kumar)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 1:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/2 "2025-07-15T13:44:10Z")
Is there any special advantage of using such axes? You can simply use ticks.
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### Author:  [@Ronis\_BR](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Ronis_BR)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 2:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/3 "2025-07-15T14:09:20Z")
I am not sure, but people who work with maps often ask me to plot the information using this kind of pattern.
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### Author:  [@jules](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jules)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 2:12pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/4 "2025-07-15T14:12:47Z")
The answer to “can it technically” is of course yes, there will be some way to plot patterns like that on the edge of an `Axis`. But it sounds like this is something that GeoMakie should ideally support as I’ve only ever seen it used with maps. @asinghvi17
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### Author:  [@Ronis\_BR](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Ronis_BR)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 2:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/5 "2025-07-15T14:13:54Z")
Yes! I fully agree! This kind of axes are only used in maps.
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### Author:  [@lupemba](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lupemba)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 3:07pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/6 "2025-07-15T15:07:40Z")
I think the style might come from Generic Mapping Tools [GitHub - GenericMappingTools/GMT.jl: Generic Mapping Tools Library Wrapper for Julia](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/GMT.jl)
Maybe it is worth considering if the Makie community can work with the GMT community and not just copy the styles.
CC @joa-quim
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### Author:  [@Ronis\_BR](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Ronis_BR)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 3:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/7 "2025-07-15T15:37:26Z")
> [@lupemba](#):
>
> I think the style might come from Generic Mapping Tools
Actually this style is used in many different software (ArcGIS, IDL, etc).
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### Author:  [@asinghvi17](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/asinghvi17)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 3:56pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/8 "2025-07-15T15:56:30Z")
Hmm, we could in theory, but it would be a bit of work. Note that the shaded regions fit in with the ticks, this is a nontrivial implementation…
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### Author:  [@Ronis\_BR](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Ronis_BR)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 4:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/9 "2025-07-15T16:09:28Z")
Ok! Should I open an issue? If so, in which repository?
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### Author:  [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 5:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/10 "2025-07-15T17:06:10Z")
This style is quite common in maps and, from experience, was very useful for navigation planing from times of paper maps. Now is more a question of style, I guess. I would be glad to collaborate but this style in GMT is quite intrinsic and deeply connected to the PostScript library that GMT uses. Not sure how this could be used by others that do not use PS,
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### Author:  [@asinghvi17](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/asinghvi17)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 6:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/11 "2025-07-15T18:45:54Z")
Probably GeoMakie? But this is also sort of a Makie issue.
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### Author:  [@asinghvi17](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/asinghvi17)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 6:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/12 "2025-07-15T18:46:42Z")
@joa-quim would you happen to know _how_ those spines are built? Does it assume you have borders that are a lat-long box? That would be very simple to do. But borders that are in some projected space would be more complicated…
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### Author:  [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 7:22pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/can-makie-plot-axis-in-zebra-style/130745/13 "2025-07-15T19:22:32Z")
Well, a disclaimer first. Most of the GMT was written by Paul Wessel, which very sadly passed away last year. I did many contributions but few on its mapping side.
My recall from debug sessions is that the fancy frame (that’s how GMT calls it) is made by drawing a thick black line and that white patches are overlapped to give it that pajama look. The length of the patch white lines are calculated using the map scale (that is how they mach the tick marks so well). All GMT maps/figures are done at a certain map-scale (or width in cm/inc that are internally converted to a map-scale). This works in both Cartesian or projected space. See for example this Antarctica [example](https://docs.generic-mapping-tools.org/latest/gallery/ex42.html). Off course, projected coordinates are converted to linear paper units so all is in fact Cartesian.
EDIT:
C functions that do frame plotting
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