Display options
When a new data set is created or loaded, it will inherit settings for any chart attached to it from the global choices. The chart display options window allows these settings to be overridden for an individual chart.
The chart options window is shown below.

At the bottom of the window are two buttons.
- Apply
- This will store and use the new settings only for the chart from which the menu was opened. It will not change any other chart that is currently showing, or any other chart attached to a new or different data set. If the changes are to affect all charts, then use the application wide Choices dialogue.
- Cancel
- Close the dialogue and ignore any changes made since it was opened.
The options that can be changed are grouped under tabs in the window.
Chart
This section contains settings for the chart display, in general.
- Chart 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
- Shadows
- When this is ticked, shadows will be added to bar and pie
charts. The images below show part of a bar chart plotted with and without shadows.
- Dashed grid lines
- This determines whether the grid lines on the chart are drawn as a
solid line or as a dashed line. The images below show part of a bar
chart plotted with a dashed grid and a solid grid.
- Thin lines on vdu
- 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 the choices dialogue.
- 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. The images below show
part of a bar chart plotted with and without black outlines.
- 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
The three images below show these possibilities.
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. The images below show the three angles of slant.
Other
This section contains some additional settings for particular types of chart display. The tab is shown below.

In the Bar charts section:
- 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. The images below show the two formats.
In the Line charts section:
- 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. The two images show the same line chart,
with and without the origin being included.
- Include symbols on lines
- 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 colours 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.
The images below demonstrate these last two effects. In the left image the symbols are included and the line is black at a thickness of 0.5 pt. In the image on the right, the symbols have been omitted, and the line changed to coloured at a thickness of 3 pt.
- Symbol size
- If plotting a line chart, each set of data points can be shown as
symbols (e.g. square or circle). The size of the symbols can
be set (in os units) using the bump icons. The two images below show
part of a line chart with symbol sizes of 16 and 48 os units.
In the Pie charts section:
- Show percentages
-
This allows the display of percentages on pie charts to be switched off
or on. By default they are on. The two images below show percentages
on and off.