How would I normalise and stack plots in lilaq

Mc-Zen · November 14, 2025, 7:36am

Hi @robbo911 and welcome to Typst and Lilaq!

In Typst, it is quite easy to do some scripting. For example, you can write a function for normalizing your data

#let normalize(values) = {
  let max = calc.max(..values)
  values.map(value => value / max)
}

so you can reuse this function for both your y and r arrays. Do you want to also rescale the bottom of your data, I mean bring the minimum down to 0? In this case, you’ll want this as your normalization function:

#let normalize(values) = {
  let min = calc.min(..values)
  let range = calc.max(..values) - min
  values.map(value => (value - min) / range)
}

After normalization, all that remains is to add 1 to the second array because now you know that both arrays will cover the range [0, 1].

Two tips for your diagram:

smooth: false is already the default, so you can omit it. Smoothing will usually only be useful very few scenarios.
If you have more than one plot like this, you can define a color cycle with one line of code instead of defining the colors within lq.plot: #show: lq.set-diagram(cycle: (red, blue)), see Using style cycles − Lilaq.

#let normalize(values) = {
  let min = calc.min(..values)
  let range = calc.max(..values) - min
  values.map(value => (value - min) / range)
}

#show: lq.set-diagram(cycle: (red, blue))

#lq.diagram(
  width: 10cm, height: 8cm,
  xlim: (3, 30),
  ylim: (0, 9000),
  legend: (position: top + right),
  margin: (top: 20%),
  xaxis: (subticks: 4, mirror: (ticks:false)),
  yaxis: (subticks: none),
  title: [PXRD Pattern],
  xlabel: [2θ (degrees)],
  ylabel: [Intensity (a.u.)],
  lq.plot(
    x, 
    normalize(y),
    label: [Experiment 1],
    mark-size: 2pt,
  ),
  lq.plot(
    q, 
    normalize(r).map(v => v + 1),
    label: [Experiment 2],
    mark-size: 2pt,
  )
)