Data Skins

Data skins add a heightened visual effect to two-dimensional plots and pie charts that are generated using the GTL. Each skin uses shading and highlighting to give the appearance of contour and depth to certain elements of a graph, including the legend. For plots, the effect is generated by filters and is applied to filled areas such as bars, bubbles, filled markers, and filled pie chart slices. When a data skin is applied to a filled area, it does not change the underlying fill color and pattern of the area, but it does set the area fill outline color to black. In that case, the outline color is controlled by the filters that generate the skin and is not controlled by the ODS style attributes. As a result, when a data skin is applied, the area fill outline is black regardless of the ODS style that is in effect or any custom outline attributes that are specified.

Data skins can be specified in the following GTL plot statements: Use the DATASKIN= option in the plot statement to specify the skin as NONE, SHEEN, GLOSS, PRESSED, CRISP, or MATTE.

The following figure shows how each of the skin values affects a bar chart and a pie chart.

The default is NONE, which has no affect.

In scatter plots, the data skins are applied to filled markers. Here is an example of a SCATTERPLOT statement that uses the CIRCLEFILLED symbol as plot-line markers and the DATASKIN=GLOSS option.