Graph2 Text Formatting and
Color Value Options

With Omnis Studio version 4.1, we now have a new graphing extension. With Omnis Studio version 4.2, we were given a nice little manual that briefly describes some of the things we can do with the extension. Unfortunately, there is still a great deal of information missing from the official documentation on certain features of the component - and many of its best undocumented features work a bit differently from what we are used to in Omnis Studio, so some guidance is definitely needed!

My purpose in writing this Monograph is to prepare the Omnis Studio developer to take better advantage of the text and color formatting features of this new component. It is truly remarkable what we can achieve - but completely hidden from us because most of these features use tags tucked into the very strings we want to display rather than properties that we control using the Property Manager and Notation. So a little education and a little mind expansion is in order!

This Monograph required 21 pages for the explanations. There are 20 illustrations plus some code listings and tables - and some added notes for version 4.2, which delayed publication for a couple of weeks. The Monograph is in pdf format and is written as a US letter sized document with two columns per page for better readability. (If printing to other paper sizes, use the scaling feature of your printer driver for best results.) Since I have learned that there is a much smaller "market" for graph-related information in the Omnis community - and since it still required a couple of months of almost full-time work to sort all of this out for you, including the submission of a large number of bug reports and enhancement requests to Mitford House - I have had to charge a little extra for this Monograph. Its price is US$25.00.

This monograph comes with three example libraries: one written using Omnis Studio version 4.1, one with the Unicode version of Studio 4.1 and one written using Studio 4.2. Since the main focus of the monograph is the Graph2 component, it is pointless to create an example library in anything less! But even if you have not upgraded your work to Studio 4.1 or 4.2, you can still download a copy from the Omnis web site at http://www.omnis.net/download/studiodownload.html. There is nothing in this library you can't explore with a demo version.

One more thing: Mac OS X users need to pay special attention to the installation of Studio 4.1. If you find Omnis Studio crashing on you when you open the example library for this Monograph, read the article on this site about Installing Studio 4.1 on Mac OS X.

You never know what you might learn in these documents...

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