multiline coords

Question

I'm using \symbolic y coords in a xbar-plot. some of these coords are (like "jährlicher Primärenergieverbrauch") very long.

so my questions are:

1. how do I generate line breaks in coords?
2. is there a way without using nodes? (something like a code I just missed)

first of all the MWE

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{width=0.9\textwidth,compat=1.4}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\pgfplotsset{every axis legend/.append style={at={(0.5,1.025)}, anchor=south,semithick,legend columns=3}}
    \begin{axis}[   xlabel=Energie {[kWh]},
            xbar,
            xmin=0,
            enlarge y limits=0.2,
            height=0.5\textwidth,
            ytick=data,
            bar width=7pt,
            symbolic y coords={Stromverbrauch,Primärenergieverbrauch,Primärenergieeinsparung,Kälteproduktion},]

            \addplot [fill=red] coordinates
            {(5398.7,Stromverbrauch)(16196.1,Primärenergieverbrauch)(32081,Primärenergieeinsparung)(41902.6,Kälteproduktion)};
            \addplot [fill=green] coordinates
            {(2391.7,Stromverbrauch)(7175.1,Primärenergieverbrauch)(10153,Primärenergieeinsparung)(15583.4,Kälteproduktion)};
            \addplot [fill=blue] coordinates
            {(488.1,Stromverbrauch)(1464.3,Primärenergieverbrauch)(4361,Primärenergieeinsparung)(2743.5,Kälteproduktion)};
    \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

and here are the pictures

this is what it looks like

and this is what it SHOULD look like

Answer 1

I would approach this plot a bit differently: Instead of using symbolic y coords, I would manually specify the labels using yticklabels={<First>,<Second>,...}, which makes it possible to specify the line breaks explicitly by using something like yticklabels={Primär-\\energieverbrauch,...}. This will only work if you also specify an align for the labels, by setting yticklabel style={align=right}, for instance.

I would also load the data into a table first, by loading the pgfplotstable package (which ships with PGFplots) and then using \pgfplotstableread{<data table>}<macro name>. You can then say \addplot table [x=<column name>] <macro name> to plot a column. If your data table does not contain a numerical ID field that can be used for the y position, you can say \addplot table [x=<column name>, y=\coordindex] ..., which will sequentially assign a number to each row in the table.

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage{pgfplotstable}
\pgfplotsset{width=0.9\textwidth,compat=1.4}

\pgfplotstableread[col sep=comma]{
Name,A,B,C
Stromverbrauch, 5398.7, 2391.7, 488.1
Primärenergieverbrauch, 16196.1, 7175.1, 1464.3
Primärenergieeinsparung, 10153, 15583.4, 4361
Kälteproduktion, 32081, 41902.6, 2743.5
}\datatable
\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\pgfplotsset{every axis legend/.append style={at={(0.5,1.025)}, anchor=south,semithick,legend columns=3}}
    \begin{axis}[   xlabel=Energie {[kWh]},
            xbar,
            xmin=0,
            enlarge y limits=0.2,
            height=0.5\textwidth,
            ytick=data,
            yticklabels={
                Stromverbrauch,
                Primärenergie-\\verbrauch,
                Primärenergie-\\einsparung,
                Kälteproduktion
            },
            yticklabel style={align=right},
            bar width=7pt,
            ]

            \addplot [fill=red] table [x=A,y expr=\coordindex] {\datatable};
            \addplot [fill=green] table [x=B,y expr=\coordindex] {\datatable};
            \addplot [fill=blue] table [x=C,y expr=\coordindex] {\datatable};
    \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

---

Generally, you can set the maximum width the labels may take up by saying yticklabel style={text width=<length>}, forcing the text to wrap around. It seems, however, that this doesn't work with umlauts, even if you load [T1]{fontenc}. Here's an example that compiles correctly with lualatex instead of pdflatex, replacing the inputenc and fontenc packages with fontspec:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{width=0.9\textwidth,compat=1.4}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\pgfplotsset{every axis legend/.append style={at={(0.5,1.025)}, anchor=south,semithick,legend columns=3}}
    \begin{axis}[   xlabel=Energie {[kWh]},
            xbar,
            xmin=0,
            enlarge y limits=0.2,
            height=0.5\textwidth,
            ytick=data,yticklabel style={text width=3cm,align=right},
            bar width=7pt,
            symbolic y coords={Stromverbrauch,Primärenergieverbrauch,Primärenergieeinsparung,Kälteproduktion},]

            \addplot [fill=red] coordinates
            {(5398.7,Stromverbrauch)(16196.1,Primärenergieverbrauch)(32081,Primärenergieeinsparung)(41902.6,Kälteproduktion)};
            \addplot [fill=green] coordinates
            {(2391.7,Stromverbrauch)(7175.1,Primärenergieverbrauch)(10153,Primärenergieeinsparung)(15583.4,Kälteproduktion)};
            \addplot [fill=blue] coordinates
            {(488.1,Stromverbrauch)(1464.3,Primärenergieverbrauch)(4361,Primärenergieeinsparung)(2743.5,Kälteproduktion)};
    \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}