Recommendations

The issue of when to use hardcoded values versus style references for overriding appearance features is complex and basically boils down to what you are trying to achieve with GTL. Here are some recommendations that are based on common use cases:
  • You are creating a graph for a specific purpose and probably will not use the code again.
    Recommendation: Develop your template code with one style in mind and use hardcoded overrides to make desired changes. One possibility is to use the JOURNAL style as a starting point. It has a gray-scale color scheme. If you want to introduce colors for certain parts the graph, there will not be much conflict with blacks and grays coming from the style. You really do not care what the graph looks like with another style.
  • You are creating a reusable graph template (without hardcoded variable names) that can be used with different sets of data in different circumstances.
    Recommendation: If style overrides are needed, use style-reference overrides, not hardcoded overrides. This allows your graph's appearance to change appropriately when you (or someone else) uses a different style.
  • You want all of your templates to produce output with the same look-and-feel, possibly a corporate theme.
    Recommendation: Spend time developing a new style that produces the desired "look-and-feel" rather than making a lot of similar appearance changes every time you create a new graph template to enforce consistency. Be sure to coordinate the colors and fonts for the graphical style elements with tabular style elements. See Managing the Graph Appearance with Styles for more information.