Add scientific notation option

and also deal with a few other corner cases on linear axis on Chartjs
plots. Closes issue #142

src/widgets/chartjs-scilinear-formatter.js

@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+/**
+ * Formatter for tick labels on a linear axis in chartjs
+ *
+ * Override the default behavious such that it:
+ *  * switches to scientific notation for large numbers with a lot of 'trailing zeros': 1e25
+ *  * only prints the trailing (least significant) digits when zoomin in: 100000000000.1 prints as '..000.1'
+ *
+ * see issue #142
+ */
+module.exports = function (tickValue, index, ticks) {
+  // Find the proper tick spacing
+  // if we have lots of ticks, don't use the ones
+  var delta = Math.abs(ticks.length > 3 ? ticks[2] - ticks[1] : ticks[1] - ticks[0]);
+
+  if (tickValue === 0) {
+    return '0';
+  }
+
+  // Find the order of magnitude of the least significant digit
+  var leastSignificantOOM = Math.floor(Math.log10(delta));
+
+  // Find the order magnitude of the most significant digit
+  var logTicks = [];
+  ticks.forEach(function (value, i) {
+    if (value !== 0) {
+      logTicks.push(Math.log10(Math.abs(value)));
+    }
+  });
+  var mostSignificantOOM = Math.floor(Math.max.apply(Math, logTicks));
+
+  // We can chose between 3 different notations for '12.34':
+  //   fixed precision:     12.34
+  //   scientific notation: 1.234e1
+  //   and truncated         ..34
+  // find how long each notation would be, and chose the optimal one
+
+  // when using scientific notation (1,2303e2), how many digits would it take?
+  var totalNumberOfDigits = mostSignificantOOM + 1 - leastSignificantOOM;
+
+  // when using fixed notation (123.03), how many digits would it take?
+  var fixedNotationDitigts = 1 +
+    Math.max(0, mostSignificantOOM) +           // digits before '.'
+    Math.max(0, Math.abs(leastSignificantOOM)); // digits after '.'
+
+  // when truncating the string to the last 5 digits, it is of course 5 digits
+
+  var tickString = '';
+  if (fixedNotationDitigts < 9) {
+    var numDecimal = Math.max(Math.min(-1 * leastSignificantOOM, 20), 0); // toFixed has a max of 20 decimal places
+    tickString = tickValue.toFixed(numDecimal);
+  } else if (totalNumberOfDigits < 9) {
+    tickString = tickValue.toExponential(totalNumberOfDigits - 1);
+  } else {
+    tickString = tickValue.toFixed(Math.max(0, -1 * leastSignificantOOM));
+    tickString = '..' + tickString.substring(tickString.length - 5, tickString.length);
+  }
+
+  return tickString;
+};

src/widgets/view-factory.js

@@ -14,6 +14,10 @@ extendWithErrorBar(Chart, 'horizontalBar', 'horizontalBarError');
 var extendWithDurationScale = require('./chartjs-duration-scale');
 extendWithDurationScale(Chart);
 
+// replace the default linear scale with a smarter formatter
+var SciLinearFormatter = require('./chartjs-scilinear-formatter');
+Chart.scaleService.updateScaleDefaults('linear', { ticks: { callback: SciLinearFormatter } });
+
 var widgetEntry = AmpersandModel.extend({
   props: {
     modelType: {type: 'string', required: true},