/figure-table-quality

name: figure-table-quality
description: 'Readability and rendering audit for figures and tables in academic manuscripts. Computes effective font/marker sizes at display scale from generation scripts, checks label collisions, color/hatch accessibility, axis-range efficiency, table formatting, and cross-figure consistency. Triggers on: "check figure quality", "audit plots", "readability check", "figure rendering", "are my figures readable", "table formatting check". Companion to figure-rhetoric (visual argument) and manuscript-typography (typesetting).'
metadata:
  version: 1.0.0
  complements: [figure-rhetoric, manuscript-review, manuscript-typography]
  category: review
  tags: [figures, tables, readability, rendering, latex]
  difficulty: advanced
  phase: review

Figure & Table Quality Audit

**Pipeline position:** Phase 2.5 (between Grounding/Polish and Submission). Runs after figure-rhetoric (content) and before arxiv-preflight (compliance). See `/manuscript-pipeline` for full execution order.

Purpose

Verify that every figure and table in a manuscript renders at readable size in the compiled PDF. figure-rhetoric checks whether figures communicate the right message. This skill checks whether the reader can physically read them.

Execution

Step 1 — Build the display-scale map

For every `\includegraphics` in the .tex source:

1. Extract the display width (e.g., `\textwidth`, `0.7\textwidth`, `0.55\textwidth`) 2. Compute the effective display width in inches using the document geometry 3. Read the figure generation script to find the `figsize` for each figure 4. Compute: `scale = display_width / figsize_width`

Also extract from the generation script or config:

• Base font sizes: title, label, tick, legend, annotation
• Marker sizes, line widths
• Bar widths (for grouped bar charts)

Step 2 — Per-figure audit (all 9 checks)

For each figure, compute effective values at display scale and check:

2a. Font size at render

effective_font = script_font × scale

| Element | Minimum | Warning | |---------|---------|---------| | Axis title | 7pt | 8pt | | Tick labels | 6pt | 7pt | | Legend text | 6pt | 7pt | | Annotations | 6pt | 7pt | | Panel titles | 7pt | 8pt |

**FAIL** if any element falls below minimum. **WARN** if any element falls below warning threshold.

2b. Label collision

Check for overlapping text in:

• X-axis tick labels (especially with rotation < 45° and > 3 labels)
• Y-axis tick labels (long text strings)
• Data annotations near each other
• Legend entries overlapping data

For rotated labels: compute horizontal footprint as `len(label) × char_width × cos(rotation)`. If footprint > tick spacing, **FAIL**.

2c. Marker and line visibility

effective_marker = script_marker × scale
effective_linewidth = script_linewidth × scale

• Markers below 4pt effective: **WARN**
• Line widths below 0.5pt effective: **WARN**

2d. Bar chart readability

For grouped bar charts:

• Compute effective bar width in inches
• Check if bars are distinguishable (minimum 3pt effective width)
• Check if hatch patterns render at effective size
• Check for bar-label alignment

2e. Color and hatch accessibility

• Are all series distinguishable in grayscale?
• Do hatch patterns provide redundant encoding for color?
• Are there more than 5 colors without hatching? **WARN**
• Are similar colors used for unrelated series?

2f. Axis range efficiency

• Compute data range vs axis range
• If less than 40% of axis range contains data: **WARN** (wasted space)
• If data touches axis boundary: **WARN** (clipped data)

2g. Annotation readability

• Do any data annotations overlap each other?
• Are annotations positioned to avoid occluding data?
• Do annotations use consistent formatting (fontsize, weight)?

2h. Legend placement

• Does the legend overlap any data points or bars?
• Is the legend in a consistent position across similar figures?
• For multi-panel figures: is the legend in the first panel only (not repeated)?

2i. Whitespace and margins

• Does `tight_layout()` or equivalent handle margins?
• Are panel titles cut off?
• Is there excessive whitespace (> 30% of figure area empty)?

Step 3 — Table audit

For each `\begin{tabular}` or `\begin{table}`:

1. **Column alignment** — Are numeric columns right-aligned? Text left-aligned? 2. **Rule style** — Uses booktabs (`\toprule`, `\midrule`, `\bottomrule`)? No vertical rules? 3. **Caption position** — Table captions above, figure captions below? 4. **Width** — Does the table overflow margins? Check for `\resizebox` or `\small` hacks. 5. **Number formatting** — Consistent decimal places? Aligned decimal points? 6. **Header clarity** — Are column headers unambiguous?

Step 4 — Cross-figure consistency

1. **Shared elements** — Do figures that share axes use the same scale? 2. **Color scheme** — Is the same color used for the same condition across all figures? 3. **Label vocabulary** — Are condition/model labels identical across all figures? 4. **Font family** — Same font across all figures?

Output format

## Figure & Table Quality Report

### Display Scale Map
| Figure | figsize | display | scale | verdict |
|--------|---------|---------|-------|---------|
| fig1   | 7×4     | 6.27"   | 90%   | OK      |

### Per-Figure Findings
#### Figure 1 (fig1_resolve_rates.pdf)
- [PASS] Font sizes: tick 8.1pt, legend 8.1pt
- [PASS] No label collisions
- [WARN] Bar width 3.2pt — borderline at print size
...

### Table Findings
#### Table 1 (table1_resolve.tex)
- [PASS] Booktabs rules
- [PASS] Caption above tabular
...

### Cross-Figure Consistency
- [PASS] Color scheme consistent
- [FAIL] Label mismatch: fig2 uses "cmd", other figures use "Yuj"

### Summary
- [count] FAIL (must fix)
- [count] WARN (should fix)
- [count] PASS

Auto-Fix Rules

**AUTO-FIX** (apply directly):

• Rotation increase for overlapping x-labels (20°/15° → 45°)
• figsize reduction to match display co