As promised here, I’ll open this up for discussion.
Issue
Graphes in Anki no longer have x and y axis titles, but had them in earlier versions (see this).
There had been discussion about making the text smaller but I couldn’t find the rational why the titles had eventually been removed.
Why have axis titles?
In maths and sciences you’re required to add axis titles so that it’s obvious what the graph is showing. It allows one to see all the important information at a glance without having to hover over every graph.
Without axis titles and hovering over the graph, the only way of knowing what the graph shows is by deducing the meaning of the graph – something that probably quite a few people might struggle with, especially if they have no background in science / graph related things.
If you open the stats and print them to pdf, the information on hover cannot be accessed anymore. Now there is no reliable way of knowing what those axis mean. This is especially an issue if you share the pdf.
Why not have axis titles?
Danika_Dakika said that it might make sense “from a data-presentation perspective” to not have axis titles.
rossgb and sorata speculated, that space constraits might be the reason (e.g. on mobile).
Describe the solution you’d like
I’d prefer if graphs would have axis titles.
Ideas to solve the space issue mentioned above
The following had been suggested by rossgb:
A problem I can see with making them responsive is the way the stats screen handles resizing.
As you make the window wider it splits the grid into more columns.
This means you could get a weird effect where as you make the window bigger the axis labels appear, then disappear, then appear, … as columns are added.
It might be better to just give the user a “show axis labels” setting and let them choose which they prefer.
Axis labels reduce available space, which is already at a premium on mobile devices, and at certain window sizes where the graphs are shown 3-to-a-row. And unlike graphs on paper, you can hover or tap on part of the graph to see a pop-up that makes the meaning of the 2 or 3 axes apparent.
The main argument for their inclusion seems to be for users who are viewing a pdf without knowing what the graphs mean. How common is that in practice? I was under the impression the pdf generation feature is primarily used by people retaining their own historical records, and for students whose teacher requests copies be sent to them, and one would hope the recipient in both cases can understand the graphs without the labels.
It doesn’t seem to be something that a lot of people want anyways, based on the activity in this topic.
@dae would you be okay with a “show axis labels” setting (like @rossgb proposed) or a fade in (like @sorata proposed)?
This does sound like quite a hindrance though. I’m not strongly for axis titles, I’d just prefer them. If it’s too much work or if too much would need to be changed, I’m okay with how it’s handled currently.