SciFigs: Legend

A legend

A legend is a graphical object that can be inserted in a graphic sheet. A legend is a description of various line, symbol and text attributes used for plotting curves on a Graph containing line layers.

Create a legend

In a graphic sheet such as figue, select the menu Insert/Legend. Alternatively, use the legend toolbar icon or right-click on a blank part of the graphic sheet and access Insert/Legend through the context menu (useful for Mac users who have no top menu bar when the graphic sheet is embedded in a larger application, e.g. inside geopsy).

A small box with Title inside appears in the Graphic Sheet.

Empty legend

Double click on this box to open the properties window and select the Legend Tab.

Legend property window

Number of entries in the legend

Enter the number of entries of the legend.

A legend is created with the default entries.

Default legend

The Property window now presents the default entries, ready to be edited.

Legend property window with the default entries to be edited and customized

Edit a legend

The Legend property window used to edit a legend includes two sections:

• a Legend box
• a Format box

Legend box

The Legend box is used to customize five items for each entry:

• Pen (Absent in map legend)
• Symbol
• Symbol pen
• Symbol brush
• Text

These five items are described by the following characteristics:

• Color: five ways are available to select colors

There are several combinations to customize colors

• Width

• Style: two types of style are available

For Pen and Symbol pen: style defines a style of line

For Symbol brush: style defines a style of filling

• Type: to choose between six symbol types, or no symbol (blank square)

• Size

• Text

Define the Text to be used in the legend box to describe each entry. It is also possible to define the color of the text.

Format Box

Legend format box

This box is used to set:

• the legend title
• automatically resize the legend object to the text length
• the font of the legend
• the line size in the legend

Example

Example of a Legend tab attributes and the resulting Legend object.

Legend tab example

Legend example

Legend example

A black text instead of a colored one is obtained by first unchecking the box, and changing Color accordingly in the Text column.

Export or import a legend

It is possible to export a legend attributes, for later use, through the button. A .legend will be created, which is in XML format.

Attributes of a saved .legend file can be imported through the button.

To get the same legend as in the example, first download the Legend example.legend file and then load it into the active Graph Sheet.