Pattern Editor
- 3 minutes to read
This topic describes the purpose of a Pattern Editor, provides a brief overview of its sections and explains how to use this editor to create a pattern at design time.
The Pattern Editor is used to simplify text customization of series labels, axis labels and legend items. The editor contains a lot of built-in predefined placeholders that can be used together with the different format specifiers to create a pattern for date-time, numeric, currency and other data types.
The Pattern Editor can be invoked for the AxisLabel.TextPattern, SeriesLabelBase.TextPattern and SeriesBase.LegendTextPattern properties in the Properties window using the ellipsis button.
Note
The Pattern Editor also can be used to format a text displayed in crosshair labels (the CrosshairAxisLabelOptions.Pattern, SeriesBase.CrosshairLabelPattern, CrosshairOptions.GroupHeaderPattern properties) and within a tooltip (the SeriesBase.ToolTipPointPattern and SeriesBase.ToolTipSeriesPattern properties).
The customization of legend items works when the SeriesViewColorEachSupportBase.ColorEach mode is enabled (the ColorEach is always enabled, by default, for Pie, Doughnut and Nested Doughnut charts).
To invoke the Pattern Editor, for example, for the Side-by-Side Bar series labels:
- select the series labels in the chart;
- locate the SeriesLabelBase.TextPattern property;
- click the ellipsis button.
Note
To show series labels in the chart, make sure the SeriesBase.LabelsVisibility property is set to true.
In the invoked Pattern Editor, you can see ‘Placeholders:’, ‘Pattern:’ and ‘Format:’ columns.
The table below lists Pattern Editor elements and explains their function.
Editor Element | Function |
|---|---|
The ‘Placeholders:’ column | Contains a predefined set of placeholders, the number of which varies depending on the series type. You can see the full list of available placeholders in the corresponding section of the TextPattern properties. |
The ‘Format’: column | Contains predefined DateTime, Number, Percent, Currency and Special formats. |
The ‘Pattern:’ column | Displays a pattern created by the addition of items from the ‘Placeholders:’ and ‘Format:’ columns. |
The ‘>’ button | Adds a selected placeholder from the ‘Placeholder’ column to the ‘Pattern:’ column. |
The ‘>>’ button | Adds all available placeholders from the ‘Placeholder’ column to the ‘Pattern:’ column. |
The Pattern preview | Displays the preview result of applying a pattern (the pattern is located in the ‘Pattern:’ column) to the chart element (series labels, axis labels or legend items). |
The ‘OK’ button | Applies a pattern (if the pattern exists in the ‘Pattern’ column) to the corresponding text pattern property and closes the editor. |
The ‘Cancel’ button | Cancels the operation of applying a pattern (if the pattern has not saved before using the ‘OK’ button) to the corresponding text pattern property and closes the editor. |
Examples
The following examples illustrate how to create a pattern and apply it to chart elements (series labels, axis labels and legend items) using the Pattern Editor.