[ Choices | Fonts | Graph | Symbols | Lines | Colours | Load/Save | Printing | Miscellaneous | Additional note ]
[ Full index ]
[ Choices | Fonts | Graph | Symbols | Lines | Colours | Load/Save | Printing | Miscellaneous | Additional note ]
[ Full index ]
The choices dialogue has a number of sections, accessed via the Tabs at the top of the window. This is shown below. Note that there may be a left or right arrow at the end of the tabs, which allows you to bring more options in to view.
At the bottom of the window there is a set of action buttons.
The actions available are:
This tab allows a number of font details to be set.
You can choose which font MultiPlot will use for each of it's styles when labelling and annotating the graph. To change the font face, click on the menu button to the right of the font name. A standard font menu will result, from which the new font is chosen. The text size (in pt) can be adjusted using the bump icons to the right of the displayed size.
This section contains general settings for the graph display.
If the option Custom is selected, then the x and y extents can be entered in the writable boxes Custom width and Custom height.
When using line widths of a 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 graph, 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 MultiPlot 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 pixels to the inch. Thus 1 px is about 0.8 pt).
See the graph layout options section for a fuller description and example images showing these settings.
This tab allows the type of symbols used on the graph to be defined. The type of symbol (e.g. square, circle) is chosen from the popup menu. The size (specified in OS units) can be set using the bump icons. If Use colour for symbols is selected, then the range of colours as chosen in the Colours tab will be used. When loading a data file, the shapes and colours used for each data set will cycle through the configured values and then wrap around. Since the number of colours and symbol styles differ, it is unlikely that different data sets would end up with identical symbols.
The line width applies to symbols that are not filled shapes, but are drawn as lines, e.g. a cross or plus symbol. In this case the line width in pts used to draw the symbol can be set using the bump icons.
The settings in this tab apply to the data lines on the graph.
This tab allows the colours used when the graph is drawn to be set. Colour is only used if the option 'Use colour for ...' is set in the Symbols or Lines tab, otherwise lines or symbols will be drawn in black.
There are eight colours used for drawing the symbols or lines, and these can be set in the upper part of the tab. Clicking on the Menu button to the right of the colour patch will raise a standard colour picker dialogue to set the colour. When drawing a graph with more than one set of data points or lines the colours will cycle through the range.
It is also possible to set a colour for the graph axes, the axis label text, and the graph annotation. By default, these colours are set to black.
It is possible to fine tune the layout details that are saved with the data. This is set by ticking the appropriate options. These correspond to some extent to the various tabs described above and are
The exact format of the format 2 file has changed a little between MultiPlot version 2.24, and MultiPlot version 3.00 and later. There is also an option, in case it is ever needed, to save the data in the older file version 2.00 format. MultiPlot version 3 can load both versions of file, but MultiPlot version 2.24 may not be able to load fully the latest version of file.
A description of the file formats is given here.
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 graph margins will immediately reflect these changes.
This has two options.
Note that most of the above settings can be changed for individual graphs once they are being displayed (see the graph display options section for a fuller description and example images). Changes made in the Choices dialogue while one or more graph windows are already showing will not affect those windows. The graph options are inherited by a data set when that data set is first loaded, thus these changes will only affect new data sets.
These pages are best viewed in a CSS compliant browser. For RISC OS, Netsurf would be the browser of choice.
Introduction
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The graph window
MultiPlot is © Chris Johnson, 2014
Email:chris@chris-johnson.org.uk
This document last modified on 15th August 2015