I was planning what to write about next week. That would make a good post. It’s a 2×2 panel chart, with some added features (different axis scales, etc.).

First I’ll write about the overlapping columns, because that’s an easier topic.

I’ve been watching this post anxiously waiting for you to show how you built this thing.
I understood how you finessed the legend, but am at a loss to start laying out the data to get the all the bars to line up.

Will you be posting that?

Cheers,

Bob

The only line produced via dummy series is the central vertical line. The box is the plot area, the horizontal dividing line is one of the category axes. The four axis scales are also dummy series, but just for the “+” markers and data labels.

But it all could be drawn with dummy series for all of the boxes and lines. Then the dummy axis legend could go anywhere.

Good point, but then it can’t be done using a dummy series.

We could switch the top and bottom panels of the chart, and leave the legend at the top of the sub-subdivided panels.

Not sure about the horizontal layout where it is as it looks like a second level of axis labeling. Perhaps it would be better at the bottom of the chart area.

The narrower columns at the bottom also seem mighty short. I used separate scales for top and bottom, I presume you’ve used the same scale for both sets of data. In your first chart (markers only) I think it might be effective with the legend entries laid out horizontally. It would take up less space vertically, and remove the impression that the lower bars were scrunched to leave room for the legend. It would also put the legend entries in the same spacial relationship (left to right) as in the clustered series.

Something like this:

Amen to that. This Blog is on the top of my list of favourites and I check every day.
Way too slick with the xy pair for the pseudo legend.

Cheers,

Bob

I did it using 4 additional series interspersed within the real data series.
The text for the entries is just spaces. The number will depend on the choosen size of the legend. A wide legend will require more spaces.

Segment A

Alpha
Segment B

Beta
Segment C

Gamma
Segment D

Delta

You can then format those extra legend to have no marker formatting.
And then size the legend to suit.

And if you include a xy-scatter line in the legend, formatted not to display the legend markers become extended.