colorbar tick distance to axes and label position

Hi,

I have the following figure generated from MATLAB2023b

by the following code

fig = figure;
fig.Position = [0 900 600 500];

% code for creating the contour 
% ...
% ... 

pbaspect([18 8 1]);
clim([-0.5 1]);
cbar = colorbar;
cbar.Location = 'north';
cbar.AxisLocation = 'in';
cbar.Ruler.TickLabelFormat = 25;
cbar.Position = [0.5; 0.91; 0.32; 0.03]; % controls the colorbar position
cbar.Label.Interpreter = 'latex';
cbar.Label.String = '$\langle u\rangle$';
cbar.Label.Rotation = 0;
cbar.Label.Position = [-1 -2]; % controls the label position
cbar.Label.Interpreter = 'latex'; 
cbar.Label.FontSize = 25;

My question is:

1. how to obtain the distance/relative position from the colorbar ticks to the axes (i.e., the red arrow and green arrow)? The command cbar.Position can only manipulate the position of the colorbar itself; it doesn't include the size of the tick labels.
2. what's the meaning of the second number in cbar.Label.Position (i.e., cbar.Label.Position(2)), indicated by the blue arrow? For the same value here (which is -2), the position of the label with respect to the colorbar will change if the fig size is changed as well. So it seems it is somehow dependent on the figure size.

[Star Strider]

The elements of:

cbar.Label.Position

are the normal [x y z] coordinates associated with any text object, and relate to the axes of the colorbar oibject.

The problem I had when I attempted to analyse this (with a synthetic contourf plot) is that I could not reconcile the axes position and the colorbar position. With my calculations (axes position(2)+position(4)), the top of the contourf axes overlapped the colorbar position, and that clearly is not the actual situation.

Someone from MathWorks will have to sort this.

[Sijie Huang]

@Star Strider Then is it possible to get the axes positions of the colorbar object? So I can adjust my label position accordingly.

[Star Strider]

My impression is that you defined the Position of the colorbar, so it should be set as you defined it. The Label position relates to the colorbar itself, since the Label is simply a text object. All those positions are somehow encoded in the figure properties, however exactly how (and how to get or set them) appears not to be documented.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

1. You can get the position property of both cbar handle, and the axes.

ax = gca
axesPosition = as.Position

2. The Position property has these 4 meanings: [xLeft, yTop, width, height].

If that doesn't get what you want, look at findobj and start looking at what the "children" of the axes represent.

[Sijie Huang]

1. the cbar.Position does not provide or include the information about the size/position of the tick labels
2. the cbar.Label.Position only contains three values, rather than the conventional [xLeft, yTop, width, height]

[Image Analyst]

OK, never mind then. I guess they're using a different definition of Position here than they do in most other places then (e.g. the rectangle function).