Commands¶

figure-gate ships two command-line tools. Installed, they are on your PATH as check-palette and check-figure. Vendored, run them as python check_palette.py and python check_figure.py.

check_palette.py¶

Gates a list of hex colors. Imports nothing outside the standard library.

usage: check_palette.py [-h] [--surface SURFACE] [--pairs {adjacent,all}]
                        [--ordinal] [--ink INK]
                        colors

Arguments¶

colors

Comma-separated hex colors. Required.

Options¶

--surface SURFACE

The background the marks sit on. Contrast is measured against this. Default #ffffff.

--pairs {adjacent,all}

Which pairs to compare for separation. adjacent compares neighbours and is the default, which is what a line chart needs. all compares every pair, which is what a scatter needs.

--ordinal

Treat the colors as an ordered ramp. Swaps the five categorical rows for the four ramp rows.

--ink INK

Comma-separated hex values for neutrals. These are exempt from the chroma and lightness rules.

Exit codes¶

python check_palette.py "#E69F00,#56B4E9,#009E73" --pairs all
echo $?

check_figure.py¶

Run with no arguments, check_figure.py audits a deliberately broken figure and reports on it:

python check_figure.py

It exits 0 when the checker correctly rejects that figure, so a build step can use it to verify the checker itself still works. If the broken figure passes, the command exits non-zero: that outcome means the checker is broken.

This command takes no figure of your own. To audit a figure, import audit or report. See the API reference.

Options¶

--venues

Print every venue's content width and exit. This flag is read before the matplotlib import, so it works on a machine with no matplotlib installed.

Venue widths¶

python check_figure.py --venues prints all twelve widths. Pass a name as venue= to audit, report, or page_scale.