DESCRIPTION

POSITION UNITS

Scaled space is measured in whatever units have been defined with a proc areadef.

For more information, see scaleunits

ATTRIBUTE TYPES

n

A single number. May be floating point or integer.
Example: Offset: 3.2

dfield

A reference to a field in the plot data. Plot data must have already been read using proc getdata. A dfield may be an integer (1 or greater), e.g. 1 would refer to the first data field. If field names have been defined in proc getdata, dfield may also be one of the defined names.

plotvalue

A plottable value given the scaling and ranges that have been set up with the most recent proc areadef. See the above description of position units

locvalue

A number or value that describes a location or length. May be either absolute units or scaled units.

If a suffix of (s) is attached to the end of the number, the number is taken as being in scaled space, and must be a plottable value (a number for numeric scaling, a date where date scaling is being used, etc.)

If the number does not have a (s) suffix, it is interpreted as being in absolute space.

Special operators: min may be used to indicate the minima of a defined plot area, and max to indicate the maxima.

Offsets: A +/- offset may be given after the value (no embedded spaces allowed). The offset is always an absolute value. Note that it is impossible to specify a negative offset when using date scaling with a date notation that uses embedded dashes such as mm-dd-yyyy. See the examples below.

See the above description of position units

Example: 3.5 = 3.5 absolute units (inches or centimeters).
Example: 142(s) = 142 in scaled units (whatever was defined in the most recent areadef).
Example: min = the plot area minima
Example: min-0.1 = 0.1 inch below plot area minima
Example: 23jan98(s)+0.5 = 0.5 inch above the point where 23jan98 (in scaled units) would lie

lenvalue

Uses same notation as locvalue except that it describes a distance rather than a location. Distances may be given in absolute units or scaled "basic" units (e.g. for date and datetime this should be a value in days; for time scaling this should be a value in minutes). See the above description of locvalue

x y

A coordinate pair. Both x and y are locvalues. See the above description of locvalue
Example: Location: 5.3 1

printf-spec

A format specifier as used in the "C" programming language, used to control the display of numeric values. Here are some examples; for more information check any good C language reference. Ploticus generally uses %g as the default spec, which displays numbers using the shortest possible representation, and generally switches to scientific notation on very large numbers or very small numbers.

printf-spec		typical results
-----------		-----------------------------------
%7.0f			500000   4500000
%5.2f			239.62   8491.50
$%.2f			$82.54
$%6.2f			$ 82.54
%3.0f%%			44%

string

A character string value containing no embedded white space. All white space before and after the string is discarded.

text

A character string value that may contain embedded white space. The specification may not occupy more than one line, however embedded newlines (specified as \n) may be used to indicate that output should have multiple lines.
Example: Yaxis.label: Number of Attempts\nBefore Success

multilinetext

Text that may be specified using one or more lines. The last line of the text is indicated by a blank (zero-length) line. If #endproc is encountered, this will also terminate the multiline item.

A common error is to forget to leave a blank line and hence get incorrect results. Blank lines that are to be part of the text may be escaped using a backslash (\). Leading whitespace (normally stripped off) may be retained by using a backslash (\), followed by the desired whitespace, followed by text (see 3rd example below).

Title: Comparison of Survey Techniques 
     By Region 
     \
     Fall, 1997

It is also ok to leave the first line blank as in the following example:

Title: 
Comparison of Survey Techniques 
By Region 
\
Fall, 1997

Here's an example where leading whitespace is preserved:

text:
  Data: 0.08 0.10 0.15 0.17 0.24 0.34 0.38 0.42 0.49 0.50 0.70 
  \      0.94 0.95 1.26 1.37 1.55 1.75 3.20 6.98 50.57

RELATED TO GRAPHICS RENDERING

pointsize

An integer point size (usable range is 5 - 30 or so).

font

A postscript font name.

color see color

textdetails see textdetails

linedetails see linedetails

symboldetails see symboldetails

conditional expression see condex