The choices dialogue has a number of sections, accessed via the Tabs at the top of the window. Note that, if the tab headings are too wide for all to be fully displayed in the window at the same time, the bump arrows are used to access those that are out of view. There is also a set of action buttons at the bottom of the window. The tabs and action buttons are shown below.
The actions available are:
This tab allows a number of font details to be set.
For the data input window, you can change the font face, using the popup menu button to the right of the font name. To change the font face, click on the menu icon. A standard font menu will result, from which the new font is chosen. The text size (in pt) can be adjusted using the bump icons to the right of the displayed size.
For the graph display, you can choose which font GraphDraw will use for each of it's styles when labelling and annotating the graph. The font face can be changed using the font menu, and the text sizes (in pt) used for the various graph annotations can also be changed, as described above.
If any data input and graph windows are showing when these options are changed, the change will be reflected in all the open windows as soon as the Set or Save buttons are pressed.
This section contains general settings for the graph display.
If the option Custom is selected, then the x and y extents (in pixels) can be entered in the writable boxes Custom width and Custom height.
When using line widths of a fraction of a pt, the VDU display can sometimes look a little uneven, particularly with lines at an angle to the horizontal/vertical. In some cases, lines can completely disappear. This is where the option Use thin lines on vdu comes in. If this is selected, then the screen display will use 1 pixel wide lines for all the lines on the graph, but when saving draw files and printing will revert to the actual line widths as set in this dialogue. If this is not set, then GraphDraw will make the assumption that lines of less than about 0.80 pt should be displayed on screen as 'thin' lines, and thicker lines will be displayed at their configured thickness. (Why 0.8 pt? There are 72 pt to the inch, and the vdu display is nominally 90 pixels to the inch. Thus 1 px is about 0.8 pt).
See the graph layout options section for a fuller description and example images showing these settings.
This tab allows the type of symbols used on the graph to be defined. The type, or shape, of the symbol, and its size can all be set. The type of symbol (e.g. square, circle) is chosen from the popup menu. The size (specified in OS units) can be set using the bump icons.
The line width applies to symbols that are not filled shapes, but are drawn as lines, e.g. a cross or plus symbol. In this case the line width in pts used to draw the symbol can be set using the bump icons.
The colour used for the symbol is now chosen in the Colours tab.
The colour used for a number of graph components can be independently chosen. The colours that can be set are
In each case, clicking the menu button to the right of the colour patch showing the current colour will raise a standard colour picker dialogue, which is used to select a new colour.
This option, when selected, will show the printer margins on the display in a mid grey colour.
Note that the printer margins are reread whenever the active printer is changed, so the graph margins will immediately reflect these changes.
Note that some of the above settings can be changed for individual graphs once they are being displayed (see the graph display options section for a fuller description and example images). Changes made in the Choices dialogue while one or more graph windows are already showing will not affect those windows, excluding font style changes. The graph options are inherited by a data set when that data set is first created or loaded, thus these changes will only affect new data sets.
The options that can be changed for individual graphs are
These pages are best viewed in a CSS compliant browser. For RISC OS, Netsurf would be the browser of choice.
Introduction
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Index |
Data input
GraphDraw is © Chris Johnson, 2014
Email:chris@chris-johnson.org.uk
This document last modified on 15th August 2015