The Root Figure

The Figure Properties editor displays and edits the attributes of the root figure node in any FypML figure document. This element sets the location and rectangular bounds of the figure on the printed page, an optional border and background fill, as well as the inheritable values of all text- and draw-related styles that govern the overall appearance of your figure.

The adjacent screenshot shows the layout of the editor panel. Some of the properties merit further explanation:

• • The figure title is only for descriptive purposes. It is never rendered anywhere on the actual figure.

  • Immediately under the title is a scrolled text area with a "refresh" button. Here is where you can enter an optional figure description -- the figure's note property. Multi-line text is permitted, and you can use tabs to organize the information in a tabular format (see screenshot). After making any changes in the text area, press the "refresh" button to "enter" them -- or use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Enter when the focus is on the text area (also, if you move the focus to another widget, the note text is automatically refreshed). The figure does not change at all -- the figure note is for the author's use only and is never rendered. It does, however, appear in the figure preview in both the Workspace Browser and the application's file chooser dialog.

  • (X,Y) is the location of the figure with respect to the bottom-left corner of the printable rectangle on the current page, while (W,H) are its horizontal and vertical extents. The printable rectangle is the printed page minus any margins. For example, if X=1.5in, Y=2in, W=6in, H=6in, and the current page is 8.5x11 inches with 0.5-in margins all around, then the bottom-left corner of the figure would be located 2 inches from the right edge and 2.5 inches from the bottom edge of the physical page, while the top-right corner would be 0.5 inches from the left edge and 2.5 inches from the top edge. Note that you won't see any visible change in the rendered figure when you change X or Y unless the Figure Canvas is in "Print Preview" mode.

  • The figure's width W and height H also define a clipping rectangle for the figure. Thus, if you notice that a portion of a graph appears clipped, or a small element like a text label is completely missing, then it's possible that it happens to lie fully or partly outside the figure's clip rectangle.

  • If you would like a border around your figure, set the border width property BW to a non-zero value.

  • If you would like to fill the entire background of your figure, set the background fill to a solid color, an axial two-color gradient, or a radial two-color gradient using the button-like background fill widget. Normally, the background fill is fully transparent, i.e, it is not filled at all. However, there could be some situations -- such as a figure in a slide presentation -- where you might want a dark background or even a color gradient. In the example screenshot, the figure has a radial background from yellow to deep orange, with the focus near the top-left corner. Note that the button's face is painted to reflect the background fill style chosen.

The three rows of widgets at the bottom of the Figure Properties editor control the font styling, text/fill color, and stroking properties of the figure node. The graphic objects in a FypML figure are organized in a top-down tree structure with the figure node at the top of the tree, and any given object in the tree will "inherit" these font and draw styles from its parent unless the style property is explicitly set to a different value. Thus, you can often change the overall look of your figure by changing a style property only on the root figure node. You will see these style property widgets -- or some variant thereof -- on all of the different node-specific property editor panels.

You can also rescale the entire figure in one operation via the pushbuttons labeled Fonts and All. First, set the Scale (%) factor to some value other than 100%; the two pushbuttons are then enabled. Press Fonts to rescale only the fonts throughout the figure; press All to rescale everything. Note that the operation is reversible -- if you're unhappy with the result, select Undo from the Edit menu and try something else.