A.5.2.1 Histogram Style Editor

The bins in a histogram can be represented in many different ways. A representation of how a bar will be displayed is shown on a button to the right of the name of each visible subset, at the bottom right of the histogram window. If you click this button the following dialogue will pop up which enables you to change the appearance.

Style editor dialogue for histogram bars

The Legend box defines how the selected set will be identified in the legend which appears alongside the plot (though the legend will only be visible if Show Legend () is on):

Icon

Displays the icon which will be shown to identify the points in the selected set. Its appearance depends on the selections you make in the rest of this dialogue window.

Label

Gives the name written in the legend to label the subset. By default this is derived from the Row Subset's name and, if it's not part of the main dataset, the name of the dataset's tab. You can type in a new value to change what is written in the legend.

Hide Legend

If this checkbox is selected, then no entry for the selected set will appear in the legend.

The Bins panel describes the form of the bars to be plotted for each data set.

Colour

Selects the colour for the bar or line which will represent this set.

Bar Form

Selects the style of bar which will be plotted. Available styles are filled rectangles, open rectangles, stepped lines and spikes.

Bar Placement

Selects where each bar will be placed on the X axis within the ordinate region which it represents. There are currently two options: Over means that it covers the whole of its range, and Adjacent means that it covers only a proportion of its range, so that multiple datasets plotted on the same graph don't obscure each other (if 2 sets are plotted, the first one will take the left half and the second will take the right half of each bin region, and so on). In the case that there is only a single data set plotted, it doesn't matter which of these is chosen.

Line Thickness

Determines the thickness in pixels of any lines which are drawn. Only applies to those Bar Forms which use lines rather than solid blocks.

Dash

Determines the dash style (solid, dotted, dashed or dot-dashed) for any lines which are drawn. Only applies to those Bar Forms which use lines rather than solid blocks.

Any changes you make in this window are reflected in the plot straight away. If you click the OK button at the bottom, the window will disappear and the changes remain. If you click Cancel the window will disappear and any changes you made will be discarded.

You can also change all the plotting styles at once by using the Bar Style menu in the histogram window. Here you can select a standard group of styles (e.g. all filled adjacent bars with different colours) for the plotted sets.