Using Options on Text Statements

Options Available on All Text Statements

The ENTRYTITLE, ENTRYFOOTNOTE, and ENTRY text statements provide options that apply to all of the text-items that form the text string (unlike the prefix options, which can be applied to pieces of the text).

TEXT-STATEMENT text-item <...<text-item>> / <options>;

The following options are available on all of the text statements:

BACKGROUNDCOLOR= style-reference | color

Specifies the color of the text background.

BORDER= boolean

Specifies whether a border line is displayed around the text.

BORDERATTRS= style-element | style-element (line-options) | (line-options)

Specifies the properties of the border line.

OPAQUE= boolean

Specifies whether the entry background is opaque.

TEXTATTRS=style-element | style-element (text-options) | (text-options)

Specifies the font attributes of all text. If a TEXTATTRS= prefix option is also used, it takes precedence over this statement option.

Setting Text Background, Borders, and Padding

By default, the background of all text is transparent. To specify a background color, you must specify OPAQUE=TRUE to turn off transparency, which then enables you to specify a background color. In the following example, the fill color of the band is specified for the background of the entry text. A border is also added.

Note: Data points that are behind the entry text are obscured when OPAQUE=TRUE.

begingraph;
  entrytitle "Regression Plot";
  entryfootnote halign=right 
   "Prepared with SAS/GRAPH" {unicode "00AE"x} " Software" /  
    textattrs=(size=9pt); 
  layout overlay;  
    modelband "clm";
    scatterplot x=height y=weight;
    regressionplot x=height y=weight / clm="clm" alpha=.05;
    entry {unicode alpha} " = .05" / autoalign=auto border=true
      opaque=true backgroundcolor=GraphConfidence:color ;
  endlayout; 
endgraph;

Notice that extra space appears between the entry border and the text. This space is called padding and can be set with the PAD= option. The default padding is

ENTRY "string" / PAD=(LEFT=3px RIGHT=3px TOP=0 BOTTOM=0) border=true;

You can set the padding individually for the LEFT, RIGHT, TOP, and BOTTOM directions, or you can set the same padding in all directions as follows:

ENTRY "string" / PAD=5px border=true;

Padding is especially useful when you want to add extra space between titles, or add space between the last title (or first footnote) and the plot area in the graph:

begingraph;
  entrytitle "Regression Plot" / pad=(bottom=10px) ;
  entryfootnote halign=right 
   "Prepared with SAS/GRAPH" {unicode "00AE"x} " Software" /
    textattrs=(size=9pt) pad=(top=10px) ;
  layout overlay;
    modelband "clm";
    scatterplot x=height y=weight;
    regressionplot x=height y=weight / clm="clm" alpha=.05;
  endlayout;
endgraph;

Managing Long Text in Titles and Footnotes

When you change the size of a graph, the size of all fonts in the graph is scaled up or down by default. However, when the graph size is reduced, even font scaling has limits on what it can do with long text strings that are specified on ENTRYTITLE or ENTRYFOOTNOTE statements. The following statement options are available to deal with this situation:

TEXTFITPOLICY= WRAP | SHORT | TRUNCATE

SHORTTEXT= ( text-items )

By default, TEXTFITPOLICY=WRAP, and no default is defined for the SHORTTEXT= option.

The text fitting policies take effect when the length of the text and/or its font properties cause the text line to exceed the space available for it. The font properties include the font family, font size, and font weight (BOLD or NORMAL). Thus, adjusting the length of the text and/or changing its font properties are adjustments you can make to fit text in the available space. You can also use the TEXTFITPOLICY= and/or SHORTTEXT= options.

The following long title uses the default fit policy, which is to wrap text that does not fit on a single line:

entrytitle "This is a lot of text to display on one line";

Notice that the current horizontal alignment (CENTER in this case) is used when text wraps. Text is wrapped only at word boundaries (a space). This next example sets the fit policy to TRUNCATE, and the ellipsis in the output text indicates where the truncation occurs.

Rather than truncating text, you can specify alternative "short" text to substitute whenever the primary text will not fit without wrapping in the available space. The short text is substituted whenever the primary text won't fit without wrapping.

entrytitle "This is a lot of text to display on one line" / 
  textfitpolicy=short shorttext=("Short alternative text");