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| Controlling The Appearance of Your Graphs |
Overview
Along with table and page attributes, ODS styles contain a collection of graphical attributes such as color, marker shape, line pattern, fonts, and so on. Many carefully designed styles are shipped with SAS that enhance the visual impact of the graphics. In addition to creating visually appealing graphics, many key elements of effective graphics are built into the various elements of the styles, such as:
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Provide maximum contrast between backgrounds and data
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Provide for ease of discrimination between different groups
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Provide equal emphasis for data with equal importance
These default styles are used to produce professional looking graphics without the need for further modification. Every ODS output destination has a default style associated with it. These default styles are different for each destination, therefore your output might look different depending on which destination you use. For information about how to specify styles and the default style for each destination, see Specifying a Style. For information about permanently changing the default style, see Changing the Default Style in the SAS Registry.
You can customize your graphical output at three levels. The following table shows the three levels of customization.
| Method | Description | Level of Complexity |
|---|---|---|
| Change the style template. See Specifying a Style. | Specify a style template with the STYLE= option to change the appearance of the entire graph. Requires no further modification. | low |
| Use Appearance options. See Using the Statistical Graphics Procedures Options. | Specify an appearance option in the SG procedure to change various aspects of your graph. Appearance options override the corresponding defaults from the current style. Note that not all appearance attributes can be specified in this way. | low |
| Modify individual style elements. See Modifying Styles. | Specify or change style attributes in order to modify a style element. This requires the use of PROC TEMPLATE style statements. | high |
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