SED navigation bar go to SED home page go to Dataplot home page go to NIST home page SED Home Page SED Staff SED Projects SED Products and Publications Search SED Pages
Dataplot Vol 1 Vol 2

BOX COLOR

Name:
    BOX ... COLOR
Type:
    Plot Control Command
Purpose:
    Specifies the color for the frame of a box to appear on subsequent plots (as specified via the BOX ... COORDINATES command) or boxes generated by the BOX command. Up to 100 boxes can be specified with the BOX ... COORDINATES command.
Description:
    Dataplot provides two methods for specifying colors.

    1. Colors can be defined by name (or by the corresponding index). Dataplot adopted it's named colors from the X11 project. Currently, 162 named colors and 100 levels of grayscale are supported. Grayscale can be specified with either G0, G1, ..., G100 (or -1, -2, ..., -100). Many older devices support only a limited number of colors. For these devices, unsupported colors will be mapped to one of the available colors. To specify a named color, see Syntax 1.

    2. Most modern graphics devices support full RGB (RedBlueGreen) color. You can alternatively specify RGB colors by entering three integer values to represent the Red, Green and Blue components, respectively. These values should be in the range 0 to 255.

    When setting the box color, Dataplot first checks if the device supports RGB colors. If not, the named color will be used. If the device does support RGB color, Dataplot will check if an RGB color has been specified. If yes, then that RGB color is used. If not, the named color will be used.

    To see the list of supported named colors (with the associated index number), see

    https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/software/dataplot/refman1/ch11/homepage.htm

Syntax 1:
    BOX <id> COLOR <color>
    where <id> is a box identifier (a number or parameter) in the integer range 1 to 100;
    and     <color> specifies the desired color.

    If no <id> is given, all 100 box colors will be set to the specified color.

Syntax 2:
    BOX <id> RGB COLORS <red> <green> <blue>
    where <id> is an arrow identifier (an integer number or parameter) in the integer range 1 to 100;
    and     <red>, <green>, <blue> is a list of integer values that specifies the desired RGB box color.

    If no <id> is given, all 100 box rgb colors will be set to the specified color.

    To turn off the RGB color, set the values to -1 (any negative value will work). Values greater than 255 will be set to 255.

Examples:
    BOX 1 COLOR GREEN
    BOX 2 COLOR BLUE
    BOX 1 RGB COLOR 220 109 88
    BOX 2 RGB COLOR 175 238 238
Note:
    Boxes can be generated in two ways. You can use the BOX ... COORDINATES command to place boxes on subsequent plots or you can use the BOX command to draw one box immediately. The BOX COLOR command is used to specify the color of the box frame in either case. When the BOX command is used, the color is set to color of the first box (i.e., <id> is 1).
Note:
    A BOX ... COLOR command with no arguments sets the box color to the default; thus BOX 1 COLOR with no arguments sets the color for box 1 to the default. A BOX ... COLOR command with no <id> refers to all 100 boxes; thus BOX COLOR GREEN sets the color green for all 100 boxes. Note also that BOX COLOR with no <id> and no arguments sets the default color for all 100 boxes.
Default:
    All box borders are black.
Synonyms:
    None
Related Commands: Applications:
    Presentation Graphics
Implementation Date:
    Pre-1987
    2020/11: Support for RGB colors
Program:
     
    ERASE
    BOX COLOR RED
    BOX SHADOW HW 0 0
    BOX 10 10 40 40
    BOX COLOR BLUE
    BOX 60 10 90 40
    BOX RGB COLOR 175 238 238
    BOX 10 60 40 90
    BOX RGB COLOR 220 20 60
    BOX 60 60 90 90
        
    plot generated by sample program
Date created: 05/06/2021
Last updated: 12/11/2023

Please email comments on this WWW page to alan.heckert@nist.gov.