rotating dual-colored circle without changing width or center

Question

I am trying to have 5 circles in a row filled with either darkgray or lightlightgray or half-filled (to indicate skill level on a CV). This all works fine as long as I use rotations of (multiples of) 90 degrees, but if I use other rotation in between, different things happen.
EDIT: i updated the code to make it standalone

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{tikz}

\newcommand{\lc}{\tikz\draw[lightgray,fill=lightgray] (0,0) circle (.8ex); }
\newcommand{\dc}{\tikz\draw[darkgray,fill=darkgray] (0,0) circle (.8ex); }

\def\AngleA{0}
\newcommand{\hc}{\begin{tikzpicture}
        \draw [lightgray, fill=lightgray] (0,0) coordinate (a) arc (\AngleA+90:\AngleA-90:.8ex) ;
        \draw [darkgray, fill=darkgray] (a) arc (\AngleA+90:\AngleA+270:.8ex) ;
    \end{tikzpicture}
}

\def\AngleB{45}
\newcommand{\hcb}{\begin{tikzpicture}
        \draw [lightgray, fill=lightgray] (0,0) coordinate (a) arc (\AngleB+90:\AngleB-90:.8ex) ;
        \draw [darkgray, fill=darkgray] (a) arc (\AngleB+90:\AngleB+270:.8ex) ;
    \end{tikzpicture}
}

\def\Rotation{45}
\newcommand{\hcc}{\begin{tikzpicture}
        \draw [lightgray, fill=lightgray, transform canvas={rotate=\Rotation}] (0,0) coordinate (a) arc (90:-90:.8ex) ;
        \draw [darkgray, fill=darkgray, transform canvas={rotate=\Rotation}] (a) arc (90:270:.8ex);
        {\rotate{45}}
    \end{tikzpicture}
}

\begin{document}

aligning circles\newline
\dc\dc\hc\lc\lc hc\newline
\dc\dc\hcb\lc\lc hcb\newline
\dc\dc\hcc\lc\lc hcc


\end{document}


 

In this case, lc, dc, and hc are my empty, full, and half-full circles. For the half-full circles, I use two arcs to make two touching semicircles. hcb and hcc my attempts at rotating the half-full circles, but neither is formatted as I intend.

For hcb, I changing the beginning and end of the arcs. Here, the bounding box of the circle rotates along with the circle so that everything else gets shifted to the right. The shift is pretty small, but enough to mess up the layout (I get the same effect if I instead specify rotate=45 behind the fill-color).

For hcc, I use transform canvas to rotate the semicircles, but it is now shifted around some point other than the center of the circle. (I have tried using transform shape instead, bit this did not result in any rotation at all).

I am not sure whether I am using the correct way top rotate these and forgetting to add some parameter or whether I should use a completely different way to rotate.

(In the image I drew the red boxes externally to illustrate the problem, because I don't know how to do that in tex)

Answer 1

Welcome to TeX.SX! I would probably use the baseline option for all the inline tikz macros to ensure correct placement and then do something like the following:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}

\newcommand{\lc}{\tikz[baseline=-.8ex]\draw[lightgray,fill=lightgray] (0,0) circle (.8ex); }

\newcommand{\dc}{\tikz[baseline=-.8ex]\draw[darkgray,fill=darkgray] (0,0) circle (.8ex); }

\newcommand{\hc}[1][0]{\begin{tikzpicture}[baseline=-.8ex]
        \draw[lightgray,fill=lightgray] (0,0) circle (.8ex);
        \draw[darkgray,fill=darkgray,rotate=#1] (0,0) -- (0,.8ex) arc (90:270:.8ex) -- cycle;
    \end{tikzpicture}
}

\begin{document}

\dc\hc\hc[45]\lc\lc ABC

\end{document}

---

Edit

Since your problem seems not only to be the vertical but also the horizontal alignment, I would suggest that you add the clip option to the first \draw macro for the half-filled circle. If you do this, you cannot add the color specification to the \draw macro any more, but you can add it to the \tikzpicture to set lightgray (or whatever your light gray actually is) as the default color. Also, it will help if you remove any whitespace from all three macros:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}

\newcommand{\lc}{\tikz[baseline=-.8ex]\draw[lightgray,fill=lightgray] (0,0) circle (.8ex);}
\newcommand{\dc}{\tikz[baseline=-.8ex]\draw[darkgray,fill=darkgray] (0,0) circle (.8ex);}

\newcommand{\hc}[1][0]{%
    \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline=-.8ex,lightgray]
            \draw[clip,fill] (0,0) circle (.8ex);
            \draw[darkgray,fill=darkgray,rotate=#1] (0,0) -- (0,.8ex) arc (90:270:.8ex) -- cycle;
    \end{tikzpicture}%
}

\begin{document}

\dc\hc\hc[45]\lc\lc ABC

\end{document}

You could then add spaces between the macros in the document body or more precisely position the circles in some other way.