Ruler in neuropixels GUI should be afixed to right Y axis

[jonnew]

I would like the ruler to be on the y-axis (could even be made from the y-axis with clever label customization or scaling of neuropixels image being plotted) so that when I pan around the ruler is never out of view:

vs:

If the ruler was made from ticks on the y-axis, it will still be visible.

[bparks13]

Current status:

Neuropixels V1e

Zoomed in

For the single shank 1.0 probe, there is already a scale bar that is close to the probe, as well as a track bar on the right side of the screen that shows where along the probe the view currently is.

Unless there is something specific about this probe view we want to modify, I am going to focus on 2.0 probes for this issue.

Neuropixels V2e

Zoomed in:

For quad-shank 2.0 probes, we see that the scale bar (which is outside of the probe contour) can be hidden by zooming in to a particular shank (in this the left most shank). The track bar is still present to show relative depth, but it is not as precise as the scale.

[bparks13]

@jonnew It is possible to only have the right ticks show up, with labels inside the plot area.

However, this only works if I activate a second Y-Axis, which is then zooming in and out independently of the first axis. In order to keep the two axes in sync would take more code. If it is not corrected, then we can get the second axis crossing appearing in the middle of the plot, as the above image shows, and the yaxis values are no longer correct.

Question
I am still working on the labels themselves, so we can ignore those for now, but can we place the axis labels on the left side instead of the right side? If we place them on the left side then we can keep the axes consistent with the plotted data without any additional checking.

Plotted Probes Can Hide Axis Labels

Shown in the image below, moving the probe around can lead to the axis labels being partially or fully obscured by the probe:

ZedGraph gives us the ability to control the ZOrder of individual plotting elements. Currently, the probe contour is given the priority ZOrder.C_BehindChartBorder, and the electrodes are ZOrder.B_BehindLegend, which places the drawn elements above the axis elements (which are at ZOrder.D_BehindAxis).

We could shift the probe contour and the electrodes down a couple Z orders so that the axis labels appear over the drawn elements, or we can leave the behavior as-is.

Consistency with Neuropixels V1

Thinking more about my initial comment that this should only apply to V2 probes, I might have been incorrect. It would probably be easiest to keep the behavior consistent between the two probe types.

Going a step further, this can be implemented in the base ChannelConfigurationDialog as a configurable option so that the behavior of other dialogs is not changed, but the Neuropixels dialogs can toggle the left-side YAxis to appear with the correct labels. This way, it minimizes the amount of code copied between classes, and also keeps the behavior consistent no matter which device is being used.

[bparks13]

Notes from meeting:

• Instead of trying to fit everything into one Pane, place a second Pane next to the first one where the scale is embedded in the second pane
• Tie the two panes together so that they zoom in and out together

[bparks13]

@jonnew Progress Update: I have added a second pane to the ZedGraph, and instead of manually plotting the scale like before I am utilizing the Y-Axis scale to display the values. Axes are synchronized across panes, so zooming in will update the y-axis labels in real-time.

The plotted Neuropixels probe does not overlap with the scale, but is clipped since it is reaching the edge of the first pane.

There are a few annoying pain points still, but this exists as a proof of concept. If we like this, I can clean up the remaining issues (labels becoming 10e3 if zoomed out at the top, zero line remaining from the x-axis at the bottom) and implement this in the other dialogs (currently NeuropixelsV1e is the only one I have this working in).