Legend on a single line not stacked vertically

Sorry if this has been done before but after 30 minutes searching I can't find.

I have a figure with several vertically stacked subplots each containing one to four lines. It's in a paper where space it always at a premium; I can't waste space outside the subplots and there's not much space inside for the 'location','best' option.

Ideally I want to have the legend above the plot (title location) saying:

( linecolour caption1 linecolour caption2 )......

not

linecolour caption 1

linecolour caption 2

etc.

(putting outside right squeezes the plot and due to varying caption width the plot areas will differ so it's not a solution).

Excel can do it (not an option to use it tho). Without resorting to low level text/line commands I can't find a way to do this in MATLAB.

Clues welcome!

Answer 1

[Dan Golding]

These days you can just specify 'Orientation' to be 'vertical': http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/legend.html#bt6s91s

Answer 2

[Jan]

There are some tools to create legends in the FEX:

• http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/27389-columnlegend
• http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/29248-gridlegend-a-multi-column-format-for-legends
• http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/29191-sub-plot-legend

[Daniel Shub]

The columnlegend submission was a pick of the week a while back: http://blogs.mathworks.com/pick/2011/02/11/create-multi-column-plot-legends/

Answer 3

[James]

thanks Jan and Daniel, the simple one works best for a quick fix, the other two don't like my strings/data form but I'll investigate the flexibility later.