text is hidden behind markers, what now...

Somehow, my text labels are obscured by my large plot markers, like this

figure
hold
text(0.5, 0.5, 'I''m hidden', 'HorizontalAlignment', 'center');
plot(0.5, 0.5, '.r', 'MarkerSize', 100)

In this example, when I change the order between the text and plot commands (so first plot and then text, it's fine, it works). But somehow in my big cloudy figure, changing the order doesn't work.

Does anybody know how I can put the labels on the big markers, instead of behind?

[Walter Roberson]

Your "big cloudy figure" -- is that a line plot? Or is it a surf or patch or pcolor ?

[Image Analyst]

A screenshot would help. When your plot is up (and is the active window), type alt-printscreen to copy the window into the clipboard. Then go to http://snag.gy and type control-v to paste it onto the website. Then tell us the URL it gives you. Or put a blank line, then a line with your url in between double < and > symbols to display the image right here.

[Jos]

Thanks for helping. I copied the figure to http://snag.gy/WoMAP.jpg

The plot consists of a series of fill commands for the triangles, plot commands for the points along the circle (with different markersizes) and text commands for the numbers. The bigger markers obscure the text labels.

Answer 1

[Sulimon Sattari]

This is not the ideal answer, I am sure there's something cleaner but it works. The ordering of the axes children is the issue here.

Try this:

ax = gca;
axes_children = get(ax, 'Children') %the ordering of the array x determines what comes up on top. you want to re-arrange this array, and then re-set the children.
new_axes_children(1) = axes_children(2);
new_axes_children(2) = axes_children(1); %create a new array with the ordering flipped
set(ax, 'Children', new_axes_children);

If I think of something cleaner I'll comment again

[Jos]

Thanks, this works on the simple piece of code in the question. But for my figure something strange happens. In this figure, I use a fill command with transparency. And after this all markers are again on top of the text labels.

I thinks this code below demonstrates the problem:

figure
hold
text(0.5, 0.5, 'I''m hidden', 'HorizontalAlignment', 'center');
plot(0.5, 0.5, '.r', 'MarkerSize', 100)

pause

ax = gca;
axes_children = get(ax, 'Children');
new_axes_children(1) = axes_children(2);
new_axes_children(2) = axes_children(1);
set(ax, 'Children', new_axes_children);

fill([0.5 2 3], [0.5 2 2], 'b');

pause

fill([0.5 2 3], [0.5 2 2], 'b', 'FaceAlpha', 0.4);

Answer 2

[Jan]

Alpha-blending means, that the OpenGL renderer is used. But then the implementation of the text rendering depends on your OpenGL driver and there is no general solution anymore. Sometimes it helps to define the text() with 3 coordinates and care for moving it between the camera and the objects - but this is not trivial when the camera is moved or the view angle is changed etc.

Sometimes it helps to change the EraseMode of the text from 'normal' to 'none'. But this can have surprising other effects, e.g. printing a hardcopy can let Matlab crash.