Make polar area charts from text

polar-area Cargo Tonnage by Port

Port Royal 1200
Havana 1050
Tortuga 940
Nassau 780
Kingston 610

Overview

Compares independent items as wedges of equal angle but varying radius around a circle — a rounder take on a bar chart. Every wedge gets the same slice of the circle; only the radius carries the value, read against the largest value in the set. Reach for it when you want to compare how big each thing is on one common scale and nothing is being divided up: tonnage by port, rainfall by month, calls by hour. Each label must be a separate thing measured the same way.

When to use

• polar-area — several independent items, each with its own magnitude on one shared scale, arranged radially.
• pie — the question is “what share is each”, and the values sum to a meaningful whole.
• radar — the axes are different attributes of one thing and the profile shape is the point, not the individual sizes.
• bar — anyone needs to compare the values precisely. Radius is harder to read than length.

Syntax

polar-area Chart Title

Label value

Data Format

Each data line follows the pattern Label value:

Port Royal 1200
Havana 1050
Tortuga 940

Wedge radius is scaled against the largest value present. Each label is also shown with its value and its percentage of the summed total — suppress any of those parts with the label directives below when the values don’t compose a whole.

A palette color word after the label — before the value — sets one wedge’s color explicitly:

Port Royal blue 1200

Directives

The title is line 1 — there is no separate title directive.

Appearance

Every chart accepts the universal appearance directives:

Colors come from the active palette — see Colors. Set the palette and light/dark theme at render time with --palette <name> and --theme light|dark|transparent.

Next

• Related: pie · radar · bar
• Then: Colors & palettes