ChartDraw manual

Choices


[ Choices | Fonts | Chart | Bars/pies | Lines | Printing ]


The choices... dialogue

The choices dialogue has a number of sections, accessed via the Tabs at the top of the window, and a set of action buttons at the bottom of the window.


 

The actions available are:

Set
This will store the new settings, which will be used for all future operations. Note that e.g. charts already displayed may not be changed, since the local settings for each chart display will override the choices settings.
Save
This will store the new settings, as in Set above, and will also save the settings to disc, so they will be used when ChartDraw is run in the future.
Cancel
Close the dialogue and ignore any changes made since it was opened.
Reload
Restore the settings to those pertaining when they were last saved.

Font tab

This tab allows a number of font details to be set.

For the data input window, you can change the font face, using the popup menu button to the right of the font name, and the text size (in pt), using the bump icons.

For the chart display, the font face used for the text on the chart can be chosen from the font menu, accessible from the popup button to the right of the font name. It is also possible to set the size of the text (in pt) for the chart title, subtitles, and chart labels.

If data input or chart windows are showing when any of these options are changed, the change will be reflected in all the open windows immediately.


Chart tab

This section contains general settings for the various chart displays, applying to more than one type.

Default size
This determines the size of the window used to display a chart. Current sizes available are
  • 640×480
  • 800×600
  • 1024×768
  • 1280×1024
  • A4 landscape
  • A4 portrait
Chart line widths
This group of options allows the setting of the default widths of lines on the chart. The widths of the chart axis lines, data lines and grid lines can be set (in pt) independently, using the appropriate bump icons.
Use dashed line grid
This determines whether the grid lines on the chart are drawn as a solid line or as a dashed line.
Use thin lines on vdu
Thin lines, as understood by the draw module are not supported directly, since the use of such lines can cause problems with e.g. high resolution printers, when the 1 pixel wide line effectively becomes invisible.

When using line widths of a small fraction of a pt, the VDU display can sometimes look a little uneven, particularly with lines at an angle to the horizontal/vertical. In some cases, lines can completely disappear. This is where the option Use thin lines on vdu comes in. If this is selected, then the screen display will use 1 pixel wide lines for all the lines on the chart, but when saving draw files and printing will revert to the actual line widths as set in this dialogue. If this is not set, then ChartDraw will make the assumption that lines of less than about 0.80 pt should be displayed on screen as 'thin' lines, and thicker lines will be displayed at their configured thickness. (Why 0.8 pt? There are 72 pt to the inch, and the vdu display is nominally 90 px to the inch. Thus 1 px is nominally 0.8 pt).

Long axis-labels display
This group of options controls what ChartDraw does when it thinks axis label text is too long to fit easily on the chart. There are three options.
  • Offset alternate labels in a vertical direction
  • Slant the text up from the left
  • Slant the text down to the right

In addition, if one of the slant options has been chosen, the angle of the slant can be set at 30°, 45°, or 60° to the horizontal.

Note that all of the above settings can be changed for individual charts once they are being displayed (see the chart display options section for a fuller description and example images). Changes made while one or more chart windows are showing will not affect these windows. Remember, the chart options are inherited by a data set when that data set is first created or loaded, thus these changes will only affect new data sets.


Bars/pies

Bar chart vertical
When this is ticked, then the bars on a bar chart will be shown in a vertical format. If not, the bars will be plotted horizontally. The axes will change accordingly.
Use shadows
When this is ticked, shadows will be added to bar and pie charts.
Black outlines on bars and pies.
When this is ticked, each component of a bar or pie chart will have a black outline placed around its edge.

See the chart display options section for a fuller description and example images


Line chart

Always include origin in line chart.
When this is ticked, line charts will always be plotted from y = 0, whatever the range of values in the data. If not ticked, then the axis range will be chosen to cover the range of values, without necessarily including the y = 0 axis.
Include symbols on line charts
If this is selected, then a symbol (e.g. square or circle) will be placed at each data point, as well as a line joining each point. If not selected, then the symbol will be omitted.
Use colour for data lines
If this is selected, then the lines joining each data point will be plotted in colour. If not selected, then the lines will be black. There is currently no user option to change the colours used.
Symbol size
If plotting a line chart, each set of data points is shown as symbols (e.g. square or circle). The size of the symbols can be set (in os units) using the bump icons. For normal square pixel modes there are 2 os units to 1 pixel.

See the chart display options section for a fuller description and example images


Printing

Print format
ChartDraw assumes that the printer uses A4 paper. Print format controls how ChartDraw arranges the print out. You are offered three options, accessed via the popup menu button.
A4 landscape
The printed chart will be formatted always to A4 landscape, whatever the format of the screen display.
A4 portrait
The printed chart will be formatted always to A4 portrait, whatever the format of the screen display.
Auto
With this setting, ChartDraw will attempt to print the chart in the format of the actual screen display, printing the chart in landscape or portrait mode as appropriate, and scaling down to fit the A4 size if necessary. Smaller sizes (e.g. 640 × 480) will not be scaled up.
Show printer margins on chart display
Most printers are not able to print to the edge of the paper. When the screen display is set to A4 portrait or landscape, ChartDraw will attempt to take account of the printer margins, and will not use the whole of the A4 sized display. If a printer driver is active, ChartDraw will read the configured printer margins from the printer driver. If there is no driver active, default values will be used until !Printers is loaded.

This option, when selected, will show the printer margins on the display in a mid grey colour.

Note that the printer margins are reread whenever the active printer is changed, so the chart margins will immediately reflect these changes.


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ChartDraw is © Chris Johnson, 2014
Email:chris@chris-johnson.org.uk