Disable Datatips on click

I've run into some difficulty deleting Datatips on a GUI I'm building using geoaxes and geoplot.

My Scenario: (R2019b)

My GUI has a geoaxes which is plotting multiple lines using a timer function; the geoaxes is updating every 1 second. For the lines being plotted I've set a ButtonDownFcn callback to a function that changes the color of all lines; one color for the selected line, and another color for the rest of the lines. There are more callbacks that this queues as well, but the baseline is I need to update when a specific line is selected.

All of this works correctly, and as it should, but when I click on a line I have a datatip appear, and it follows the clicked line as its data points update. I don't want this to happen, I haven't found any resources that can successfully disable datatips.

Solutions I've found have included disableDefaultInteractivity, delete(findall(gcf, 'type', 'hggroup')), toying with datacursormode; None of them work.

disableDefaultInteractivity doesn't work for two reasons:

1) I get an error trying to use this on my geoaxes handle, the error says the object is not of type axes so it won't work

2) even if I did get this default interactivity to work, I would lose my ability to click and drag around the geoaxes as my lines are plotting. (this is more relevant for R2020a+ because the interactivity of a geoaxes needs to be turned on using enableDefaultInteractivity per R2020a release notes)

delete(findall(gcf, 'type', 'hggroup') works, but doesn't fully do the job:

calling this within the 'buttondownfcn' callback works in deleting previous datatips (originally multiple datatips were being generated), but there seems to be no reference available to the new datatip until after the buttondownfcn callback returns. I can verify this by using the same command in the timer function; the current datatip disappears once the timer function is called.

datacursor and UpdateFcn gives mixed results:

While I'm able to use this to get access to the handle for the current datatip and delete it I get numerous errors because I'm deleting the obj the callback is referencing.

Bottom line:

Is there any way to turn off data tips from the get-go? It seems like this should be controllable on initialization but I can't find anything.

Answer 1

[Tommy]

Not the greatest solution, but you could make the datatips invisible until your timer deletes them:

dcm = datacursormode;
dcm.Enable = 'off';
dcm.UpdateFcn = @makeDataTipInvisible;

function txt = makeDataTipInvisible(pdt, ~)
    pdt.Visible = 'off';
    txt = '';
end

I am using R2019a, but the documentation for UpdateFcn implies that the UpdateFcn stopped accepting a reference to the data tip sometime between R2019a and now, I'd guess in R2020a as you are using R2019b. If you want your GUI to work for the latest release(s), you should keep in mind that the above approach seems to stop working at a certain point. For R2020a+, does

ax = geoaxes;
ax.Interactions = [panInteraction zoomInteraction];

not do the trick? I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say

"because the interactivity of a geoaxes needs to be turned on using enableDefaultInteractivity per R2020a release notes"

A potentially irrelevant note:

I disabled the data cursor mode in my example above because this mode (the same mode obtained by clicking the corresponding axes toolbar button) disables the default interactions, including pan and zoom. However, disabling this mode then enables the default interactions, including the 'data tip interaction' which, as far as I can tell, is different from the aforementioned data cursor mode. One difference is that hovering over graphics objects creates data tips, whereas you need to actually click a graphics object in data cursor mode to create a data tip. The effect is that UpdateFcn is called even when the user hovers over a graphics object, so this function better return before the user moves the mouse away (thereby deleting the data tip which had been previously created) or else you'll see the same warning you got when you tried to delete the data tip within the UpdateFcn. This is illustrated by the following:

ax = geoaxes;
latSeattle = 47.62;
lonSeattle = -122.33;
latAnchorage = 61.20;
lonAnchorage = -149.9;
geoplot(ax,[latSeattle latAnchorage],[lonSeattle lonAnchorage],'g-*')
% (^ example from geoaxes reference page)

dcm = datacursormode;
dcm.Enable = 'off';
dcm.UpdateFcn = @waitThenDataTip;

function txt = waitThenDataTip(pdt, ~)
    pause(1);
    txt = '';
end

You can probably get by without worrying about this, but I figured I'd mention it anyway.

[Nick Donatelli]

Turning off the visibilty does work. It's certainly not the ideal solution because it still generates it/takes up some memory but I'll just go with the bug/feature mentality I guess.

Here's the link to the release notes for R2020a: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/release-notes.html?category=graphics&rntext=&startrelease=R2019b&endrelease=R2020a&groupby=release&sortby=descending&searchHighlight=

The third bullet point from the bottom of this list calls out Built-In Axes Interactions.

As for attempting this in my code, I am creating the geoaxes as a child of a figure, running the following code (where obj.master is a figure(); and obj.geoAx is a geoaxes with parent obj.master in a gui classdef)

obj.geoAx = geoaxes(obj.master);
obj.geoAx.Interactions = [panInteraction zoomInteraction];

This results in the following error:

Error using matlab.graphics.interaction.interactioncontainers.InteractionContainer/set.InteractionsArray

Setting interactions on GeographicAxes is not supported.

attempting to use datacursormode is how I'm getting to the UpdateFcn for a datatip. Unfortunately setting Enable to 'off' doesn't do anything, probably because of the nested nature of the GUI/children.

Thank you for the answer using the Visible property, I can use this in R2019b and I'll have to see what does and doesn't work in R2020a. I fear that the "updating" between the two releases may "upgrade" out this solution.

[Nick Donatelli]

As a follow-up I did test modifying the Interactions in R2020a, this does work and will disable the datatips without disabling the other interactivity using the same code format where I have nested geoaxes in a figure. I don't receive the same error as I did in R2019b.

The 'Visible' property is still available to modify in R2020a in the UpdateFcn also, maybe that plan to remove the reference is set for R2020b (although I could definitely see some utility in this for future development so I hope they don't change it)

I was able to achieve both of these methods using R2020a, thank you for your input

[Tommy]

Glad you got it to work, and happy to help!