25

I know how to create a legend in a pgfplots plot. See

Legend in tikzpicture

and

Using a pgfplots-style legend in a plain-old tikzpicture.

But I do not know how I can create a legend with two columns.

Community
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Jana
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2 Answers2

45

Simply set the key legend columns=2.

Depending on what you need, you might also be interested in transpose legend and/or reverse legend.

EDIT:

in order to customize the legend's appearance, you can use legend style={<option list>} where <option list> can be any option which applies to a PGF \matrix. All these options can be found in the PGF manual. The one which is necessary here is the column sep key. We have to restrict it to the second column (unless we also want to customize the column separation between images and text).

Here is an example:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.6}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
    \begin{axis}[
        legend columns=2, 
        legend style={
                    % the /tikz/ prefix is necessary here...
                    % otherwise, it might end-up with `/pgfplots/column 2`
                    % which is not what we want. compare pgfmanual.pdf
            /tikz/column 2/.style={
                column sep=5pt,
            },
        },
    ]
        \addplot {x};
        \addlegendentry{$x$}
        \addplot {x+4};
        \addlegendentry{$x$+4}
    \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Christian Feuersänger
  • 55,840
  • Is there a way to increase the space between the columns? Now the image of the 2nd column starts without space directly after the description of the item in the first column. – Jana Nov 03 '12 at 11:27
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    See my edit. It might better to add a further question in the future (will simplify searches for the follow-up question). – Christian Feuersänger Nov 03 '12 at 11:54
3

This is a very old question but in case anyone else stumbles upon this I find it far easier to just add whitespace directly into the labels in question using "~".

Like this:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.6}

\begin{document}


\begin{tikzpicture}
    \begin{axis}[
        legend columns=2
    ]
        \addplot {x};
        \addlegendentry{$x$~~~~}
        \addplot {x+4};
        \addlegendentry{$x$+4~~~~~}
    \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}


\end{document}
sfortney
  • 161