Info Catalog octave: Searching Properties octave: Graphics Data Structures

octave: Managing Default Properties

 
 15.3.5 Managing Default Properties
 ----------------------------------
 
 Object properties have two classes of default values, “factory defaults”
 (the initial values) and “user-defined defaults”, which may override the
 factory defaults.
 
    Although default values may be set for any object, they are set in
 parent objects and apply to child objects, of the specified object type.
 For example, setting the default ‘color’ property of ‘line’ objects to
 "green", for the ‘root’ object, will result in all ‘line’ objects
 inheriting the ‘color’ "green" as the default value.
 
      set (0, "defaultlinecolor", "green");
 
 sets the default line color for all objects.  The rule for constructing
 the property name to set a default value is
 
      default + OBJECT-TYPE + PROPERTY-NAME
 
    This rule can lead to some strange looking names, for example
 ‘defaultlinelinewidth"’ specifies the default ‘linewidth’ property for
 ‘line’ objects.
 
    The example above used the root figure object, 0, so the default
 property value will apply to all line objects.  However, default values
 are hierarchical, so defaults set in a figure objects override those set
 in the root figure object.  Likewise, defaults set in axes objects
 override those set in figure or root figure objects.  For example,
 
      subplot (2, 1, 1);
      set (0, "defaultlinecolor", "red");
      set (1, "defaultlinecolor", "green");
      set (gca (), "defaultlinecolor", "blue");
      line (1:10, rand (1, 10));
      subplot (2, 1, 2);
      line (1:10, rand (1, 10));
      figure (2)
      line (1:10, rand (1, 10));
 
 produces two figures.  The line in first subplot window of the first
 figure is blue because it inherits its color from its parent axes
 object.  The line in the second subplot window of the first figure is
 green because it inherits its color from its parent figure object.  The
 line in the second figure window is red because it inherits its color
 from the global root figure parent object.
 
    To remove a user-defined default setting, set the default property to
 the value "remove".  For example,
 
      set (gca (), "defaultlinecolor", "remove");
 
 removes the user-defined default line color setting from the current
 axes object.  To quickly remove all user-defined defaults use the
 ‘reset’ function.
 
  -- : reset (H)
      Reset the properties of the graphic object H to their default
      values.
 
      For figures, the properties "position", "units", "windowstyle", and
      "paperunits" are not affected.  For axes, the properties "position"
      and "units" are not affected.
 
      The input H may also be a vector of graphic handles in which case
      each individual object will be reset.
 
DONTPRINTYET       See also: cla XREFcla, clf XREFclf, *notenewplot:
DONTPRINTYET       See also: cla XREFcla, clf XREFclf, newplot

      XREFnewplot.
 
    Getting the "default" property of an object returns a list of
 user-defined defaults set for the object.  For example,
 
      get (gca (), "default");
 
 returns a list of user-defined default values for the current axes
 object.
 
    Factory default values are stored in the root figure object.  The
 command
 
      get (0, "factory");
 
 returns a list of factory defaults.
 

Info Catalog octave: Searching Properties octave: Graphics Data Structures