Skip to main content

Quick-start guide

In this guide you will learn how to use Lilaq for creating basic diagrams and plots.

Reading this guide may save you a lot of scrolling! That's why it's kept really short ;) On top, this guide links you to all necessary resources you need to understand Lilaq.

Getting started​

We will start by importing Lilaq under the canonical abbreviation lq.

#import "@preview/lilaq:0.2.0" as lq

Since Lilaq has a rather flat namespace with many definitions, it is highly recommended not to import everything * into the global scope.

The first plot​

In order to create our first visualization, we use diagram. A diagram can take an arbitrary number of plot objects that are generated by the various plot functions. For this example, we use plot to make a 2D line plot from arrays of xx and yy values.

#lq.diagram(
  lq.plot((0, 1, 2, 3, 4), (5, 4, 2, 1, 2))
)

Pretty easy. Let's add another plot, a title, and axis labels!

#let xs = (0, 1, 2, 3, 4)

#lq.diagram(
  title: [Precious data],
  xlabel: $x$, 
  ylabel: $y$,

  lq.plot(xs, (5, 4, 2, 1, 2), mark: "s", label: [A]),
  lq.plot(xs, (2, 5, 4, 2, 3), mark: "o", label: [B])
)

Note that a legend automatically appears when the plots are labeled. Only labeled plots are listed. You can find out more in the legend tutorial on how to configure and customize legends.

Style cycles​

You may have noticed that in the previous example, our two plots had different colors − without explicitly specifying so! The default plot styles are defined in so-called cycles that reduce redundancy and enhance consistency between diagrams. The cycle tutorial explains how to use and create such style cycles.

info

Note that you can always override the cycle style by passing explicit arguments to the plot functions. Here for example we could write lq.plot(.., color: green) to force a different plot color.

Diagram axes​

Although usually on the side, the axes carry part of the most important information that a diagram bears − from ticks over axis labels to scales. The axis tutorial guides you through a series of steps to set up and adapt the diagram axes to your needs.

Anatomy of a diagram​

A diagram consists of plots, axes, ticks, labels, legends and more. Click on any annotation to find out more about parameters, usage, and customization.

Anatomy of a Lilaq plot
lq.title
lq.ylabel
lq.xlabel
lq.yaxis
lq.xaxis
lq.legend
lq.tick
lq.spine
lq.tick-label
lq.grid
lq.scatter
lq.errorbar
lq.plot

Tutorials​

Please refer to the following resources for further guidance. In particular, the tutorial styling and presets may save you a lot of time.