What's New

What's New in SAS/GRAPH 9.2: ODS Graphics Editor

Overview

The following changes are new for the SAS 9.2 Phase 2 release:

enhancements to the behavior of graph annotations
changes to the editing process

Annotation Enhancements

Here are several enhancements to graph annotations:

You can draw an arrow annotation head-to-tail.
After you create a line or arrow, you can rotate the line or arrow in 15-degree increments.
After you create an oval or rectangle, you can resize the oval or rectangle while maintaining the aspect ratio of the original annotation.
If a line or arrow annotation is attached to the data, then you can specify data values to position the line or arrow.

Editing Process Changes

A new SGE=ON option added to the ODS LISTING statement is used to create editable ODS graphs. When you run a graph procedure with this option, the ODS Graphics Editor generates an ODS Graphics Editor file (with the extension .sge). SGE files can be opened from the Results window or from an installed stand-alone ODS Graphics Editor (Windows and Linux hosts only). If you later change and rerun the SAS program, SAS creates a new SGE file. The original SGE file remains in the SAS Results window.

This change results in the following benefits:

Editable graphics can be created in batch mode.
SGE files can be created on z/OS systems. Though you cannot run the editor on z/OS systems, you can generate files on z/OS and then move those files to another system on which you can run the editor.
SAS performance is improved because SGE files are created only when you use the SGE=ON option. When the ODS LISTING destination is closed or when SGE=OFF, SGE files are no longer created. (In the past, you issued an SGEDIT ON command in the SAS Results window to configure SAS to create editable graphs. This setting persisted across SAS sessions, so SGE files were always created until you issued an SGEDIT OFF command.)

Note: For backward compatibility, ODS Graphics Editor continues to honor the SGEDIT ON and SGEDIT OFF commands.
SGE files are easy to identify because they are associated with a specific new icon ( ).

On Windows and Linux systems, the stand-alone editor must be installed even when you plan to invoke the editor from SAS. You cannot open SGE files without the stand-alone editor on Windows and Linux systems.