How to publish text and pictures in a loop

I want to make a simple catalog over screen clips, which I captured with the Windows 7 Snipping Tool. That's simple with a for-loop, I thought. That would output text, picture, text, picture, etc. However, the script below produces a block of text followed by the pictures. (R2012a).

Next, I included the text in the figure with the function, title. However, I have set a max width as an publish option. In many cases that made the text unreadable small.

Using the errordlg to show the text is not attractive.

Have I missed an option in publish?

Is there a simple work around?

%%Snipping Tool clips
file_spec   = fullfile( folder_spec, '*.png' );
sad         = transpose( dir( file_spec ) );
for sa = sad
    fprintf( '%s | %8u | %s\n', datestr(sa.datenum,31), sa.bytes, sa.name )
    ... create a figure with an axes 
    pic = imread( fullfile( folder_spec, sa.name ), 'png' );
    imagesc( pic )
end

[Walter Roberson]

No drawnow() ?

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

is a code secton break. You can find more information on it here:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2013a/matlab/matlab_prog/run-sections-of-programs.html#brqxeeu-285

You may also be interested in snapnow() to force publish to take a snapshot.

doc snapnow

[jfaulhab]

Is there also a way to publish picture, text, picture, text... inside a loop? Normally with snapnow, the figure is placed at the bottom of the section. Any idea how to accomplish this?

Many thanks in advance!

Answer 2

[per isakson]

I've found the answer, which raises a new question. How come I missed the importance the position of "%%" relative to the loop?

A "%%" need to be inside the loop to "flush the output buffer". The code below does it.

%%Snipping Tool clips
file_spec   = fullfile( folder_spec, '*.png' );
sad         = transpose( dir( file_spec ) );

for sa = sad
    fprintf( '%s | %8u | %s\n', datestr(sa.datenum,31), sa.bytes, sa.name )
    ... create a figure with an axes 
    pic = imread( fullfile( folder_spec, sa.name ), 'png' );
    imagesc( pic )
end

.

Cont.

The code below illustrates the role of cell break, %%, inside the loop. Only Test 1 produces the result

• text,picture, text,picture, text,picture

rgb = imread('ngc6543a.jpg');
%

%%Test 1
for ii = 1 : 3
    fprintf( 'Picture: %u', ii )
    image(rgb);
end

%%Test 2
for ii = 1 : 3  
    fprintf( 'Picture: %u\n', ii )
    image(rgb);
end

%%Test 3
for ii = 1 : 3  
    fprintf( 'Picture: %u\n', ii )
    figure, image(rgb);
end

%%Test 4
for ii = 1 : 3  
    fprintf( 'Picture: %u\n', ii )
    figure, image(rgb);
    drawnow()
end

.

2013-08-08: With R2013a and snapnow, this example produces the desired result

• text,picture, text,picture, text,picture

%%Test with snapnow
for ii = 1 : 3  
    fprintf( 'Picture: %u\n', ii )
    figure, image(rgb);
    snapnow()
end

Since when has snapnow been around? Sean, thanks for making me aware of it.

[Walter Roberson]

Whoa! A pure comment makes a difference ?? It isn't written as a pragma!

[per isakson]

No pragma - just two percent characters. I assume, the reason is that "%%" is more than a comment it is a "cell break".

[francesco]

Hello I've tried to publish "test 1" but it doesn't work on R2007B. I think my Matlab version need the "for" and "and" statement of the loop to be inside the same cell. So the part:

%% Test 1 for ii = 1 : 3 %%

is considered an incomplete statement. Can someone help me?

[per isakson]

I guess, NO. The behavior of Matlab has been changed. However, have you tried the other tests?

[francesco]

Thank you very much for answering! Please find below results of the four trials:

TEST 1

no images are printed and the following text appears:

2Error: At least one END is missing: the statement may begin here."

TEST 2 produces the following:

All the text parts are reported at the beginning:

Picture: 1 Picture: 2 Picture: 3

And below just one image is printed

TEST 3 produces the following:

Picture: 1 Picture: 2 Picture: 3

And below 3 images are printed

TEST 4 same results of TEST 3

[per isakson]

Probably, in test 2 the images are overwritten before they are captured. I guess, the image captured is the last one.

I can think of one somewhat clumsy work-around. Make an m-function with a for-loop, which writes an intermediate m-file, which contains

    fprintf( 'Picture: %u', 1 )
    image(rgb1);
    fprintf( 'Picture: %u', 2 )
    image(rgb1);
    fprintf( 'Picture: %u', 3 )
    image(rgb3);

Then publish this intermediate file.

[francesco]

Yes, I think this is the only to overcome the problem. Thank you very much for your help ! Best regards

[Peter]

And something else to watch out for: Following this answer I discovered (2012b) that a try catch block around the section ment to flush the figures is a problem. For me, I had to remove the try catch, otherwise the %% had no effect in within the loop.