Tkgraph Control Panel

The Tkgraph Control Panel is the primary tool used to modify the items on the Canvas. There are a variety of different tabs associated with the various different types of items that can be placed on the Canvas. For now we will look at the tabs for XY Graphs, Datasets, Labels, and Images. The rest of the tabs (except for the Page Props tab, which is beyond the scope of this tutorial) are easy to use once you've mastered these first four.


XY Graph Tab

This tab, as with all the others, is separated into 2 components. The top component contains a set of buttons for (de)selecting items, raising and lowering items, deleting items, and so on. The second area is used to get and set individual properties for the selected items.

There are three rows of buttons in the button area. The first row contains 2 buttons. One is labeled Select no items, the other Select all XY Graphs. The first button will clear the selection of every item on the canvas. The result of pressing this will be that there is no selected item on the Canvas. The second button causes all of the XY Graph items on the Canvas to be selected, and deselects every other item. After pressing this button, the selection will only contain XY Graph items. If you want to change, for example, the font used for drawing tick labels on every graph on the Canvas, this button will be useful.

The first button in the next row is Autoscale. This works just like the AS button on the shortcut toolbar on the Tkgraph main display.

The next button is Delete. Don't press this until after the tutorial is over. When pressed, all of the selected XY Graphs will be deleted from the Canvas. Other item types are ignored, even if they are selected. We want to keep our current graph on the page as an example, so don't delete it yet.

The Raise and Lower buttons will not be used in this tutorial. You can see the full documentation to read about these buttons.

Show Current Values and Deselect all options will be described in a moment. First you need to know a little more about the Properties area of this tab.

The Properties area consists of three columns. The first column contains a set of checkboxes. The second column describes a particular property of the item (Title of a XY Graph, for example). The third column displays a value for that particular property. The values for the properties are not automatically updated. This is where the Show Current Values button comes in. Pressing this button will fill in all of the property values for the selected item. Since only one item can have its values reflected, if the selection contains multiple items, one is chosen at random and its values are displayed.

The checkboxes in the first column are used to indicate which option will be set when the Apply button at the bottom of the Control Panel is pressed. The process for changing a property of a graph or other item is simple:

Multiple properties can be set at the same time. For example, you can set the Title and the Subtitle of a graph by selecting both properties and entering values for both.

Some of the item property listings can be quite long, as you may notice in the XY Graph tab. To ensure that none of the checkboxes are selected and that you don't inadvertantly set a property by accident, you can use the Deselect all options to clear all of the checkboxes for that particular tab.

Enough talk. Try setting the title of the graph on your Canvas to "My Title". Remember that every selected graph will be modified, so make sure that only one graph is selected. If you wish to clear the title, clear the value displayed in the title entry area in the Control Panel, select the Title property, and hit apply. It's the same process you used to set the title.

Now try setting the font used to display the title. The Title Font property is listed just below the Title property. You'll notice that the label for this property is actually a button. If you press this button then a Font Selection window will appear. Font names can be quite confusing on UNIX computers, and this Font window is used to make the task of selecting a font easier. You can scroll through the listing of fonts and click on one to see what it looks like. When you click on a font, the label below the font listing is automatically updated to show you what the font looks like. When you have found a font that you want to use, press the OK button on the Font window. This will copy the font that you selected to the font property entry. The other properties listed for the XY Graph tab are described in the full documentation.

Now let's take a look at some other useful tabs in the Control Panel. Go ahead and press the Dataset tab on the Control Panel.


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