SAS 9.4 Graph Template Language, 3rd Edition

Rendering a Graph with Annotations

In order to render a graph with annotations, you must include at least one ANNOTATE

statement in the graph template. The ANNOTATE statement causes the annotations to

be read from the SG annotation data set and drawn on the graph. You can place an

ANNOTATE statement anywhere in the template. However, the drawing spaces that are

specified for the annotations must be valid in the context of the ANNOTATE statement

location. The order in which the annotations are drawn with respect to the graph

elements depends on the LAYER option for the annotations. By default, annotations are

always drawn on the front layer. In that case, the annotations are drawn after the graph

elements are drawn and appear on top of the plots and other graph elements. If you

specify BACK for the annotation layer, the annotations are drawn before the graph

elements are drawn and appear behind the plots and other graph elements.

When you render your graph, you must include the SGANNO= option in the

SGRENDER statement to specify the name of your SG annotation data set.For

examples, see “Example 1: Creating Custom Labels” on page 405 and “Example 2:

Displaying Subsets of Annotations in Axis-Aligned Insets” on page 409.

Subsetting Annotations

By default, the ANNOTATE statement draws all of the annotations that are stored in the

SG annotation data set. You can use the ANNOTATE statement ID= option to display a

subset of these annotations. Subsetting your annotations enables you to use one SG

annotation data set with multiple plots. To use the ID= option, the observations for the

annotations must contain an ID column. The ID column is a character column that stores

a unique character value that identifies the subset to which each annotation belongs.

When the ID="identifier" option is used in the ANNOTATE statement, only the

annotations with ID column values that match the identifier value are displayed. The

remaining annotations are ignored. For more information about the ANNOTATE

statement ID= option, see “ANNOTATE Statement” in SAS Graph Template Language:

Reference. For an example, see “Example 2: Displaying Subsets of Annotations in Axis-

Aligned Insets” on page 409.

Examples

Example 1: Creating Custom Labels

Overview

This example demonstrates how to use the Graphic Template Language (GTL)

annotation facility to create custom category labels for a horizontal bar chart. The bar

chart plots the average highway mileage (response) by vehicle type (category).

Ordinarily, the category labels for a horizontal bar chart appear on the Y axis to the left

Example 1: Creating Custom Labels 405

of each bar. This example demonstrates how to print the labels on the left end of each

bar instead. This example also uses the sheen data skin on the bars. Because of the

reflection on the sheen data skin, the labels are raised slightly to center the label in the

reflection on each bar. Finally, the label text color is set to the graph contrast color.

The following figure shows the final graph.

Program

/* Summarize the highway mileage data in SASHELP.CARS. */

proc summary data=sashelp.cars nway;

class type;

var mpg_highway;

output out=mileage mean(mpg_highway) = mpg_highway;

run;

/* Create the annotation data set. */

data anno;

retain function "text" drawspace "datavalue"

textfont "Arial" textweight "bold"

textcolor "GraphData1:contrastColor"

width 100 widthunit "pixel"

anchor "left" x1 2

discreteoffset 0.1;

set mileage(keep=type);

rename type=yc1;

length label $12;

label=type;

run;

/* Create the template. */

proc template;

define statgraph barchart;

begingraph;

entrytitle "Average Highway Mileage by Vehicle Type";

layout overlay /

yaxisopts=(display=(label))

xaxisopts=(label="Average Highway MPG" offsetmax=0.05);

406 Chapter 19 • Adding Data-Driven Annotations to Your Graph