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Changing Formatting Attributes

Formatting attributes let you control the visual appearance of a freeform table. You set default values for formatting attributes in the Default-cell-attribute of the freeform table, and individual cell values by choosing the edit-cell-format menu option when you click in any table cell. You can use all of the formatting attributes to format individual cells except for Border-color, Height, and Width, which are applicable only in the Default-cell-format attribute.

The names and descriptions of the freeform table formatting attributes, along with their default values, are:

This attribute... Has this default... And specifies...
Background-color
transparent
Any color, meta-color, or a symbolic expression as the freeform table's background color.
Border-color
foreground
Any color or meta-color as the border color.
Height
35
An integer as the height (in pixels) of the freeform table's cells.
Width
150
An integer as the cell width (in pixels).
Text-alignment
right
The value left, center, or right as the alignment for text within cells.
Text-color
foreground
Any color or meta-color as the text color of cells.
Text-size
small
The cell font size as small, large, or extra-large.

Formatting attributes for an individual cell override the default value. For example, if the Default-cell-format attribute specifies the background-color as yellow, and you edit the background-color of an individual cell to:

all the freeform table cells will have a yellow background, except for the cell whose format you edited, which will have a blue background.

When entering formatting attributes, the Text Editor includes in its freeform table prompts the line-color is attribute, which is applicable only to charts. Also, the Text Editor does not prevent you from entering a formatting attribute more than once. If you do so, however, G2 uses the last one. For example, if you enter both of these statements in the Default-cell-format attribute:

G2 discards the first statement and uses only the last statement; the background color of every cell would then be red.

Here is part of a freeform table's attribute table after you set every available formatting attribute from the Default-cell-format attribute:


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