Default Appearance Features in Graphs

Graphs that are produced with GTL derive their general default appearance features (fonts, colors, line properties, and marker properties) from the current ODS style. The following three images show the same graph that is rendered with three different styles.

An important point to note, here, is that the appearance of the graph changes when the template is executed, not when it is compiled.

Fully one third of all GTL syntax addresses matters of appearance. Yet, most of the examples in this document do not use the appearance syntax because the examples take advantage of the pre-defined styles. Whenever the options in your graph template explicitly change a color or font family, you are locking those decisions into the compiled template. Appearance options in GTL always override any similar appearance settings contained in the style. Thus, setting a fixed font or color appearance option might yield satisfactory results with some styles but not with others. For that reason, the compiled graph and table templates that are included with many SAS procedures do not contain references to fixed fonts and colors.

This chapter shows "best practices" to follow so that your GTL programs integrate style definitions to create the look that you desire in your graphics output. The coding strategy that you use depends on how much style integration you need. If you want to change the appearance of all your graphs or apply a custom style to them, you can define your own style. For details, see Managing the Graph Appearance with Styles.