ODS Style Templates

It is often useful to create graphs with specific visual characteristics that do not have to be hard coded into the GTL for every graph that you create. For example, you might want to modify settings for the following graph features:

font or font sizes
line or marker properties
colors
display features for box plots, histograms, contours, and other chart types
a combination of features that are related to a publication or corporate presentation scheme.

Because the default properties of nearly all GTL appearance-related options are obtained from the current style (see Managing Graph Appearance: General Principles), modifying an existing style is often the best way to enforce a certain look-and-feel across many graphs.

Similar to graphics templates, ODS style templates are stored in SAS item stores. All styles supplied by SAS are located in the STYLES directory of the SASHELP.TMPLMST item store. Templates can be viewed from the Templates window (ODSTEMPLATE command). The template source can be viewed by opening any template.

Although an ODS style can be constructed from scratch, it is much simpler to identify a style that is fairly close to what you want and make limited changes to it. The following styles are recommended starting points.

Style	Example
LISTING white background white wall sans-serif fonts color used for lines, markers, and filled areas other colors the same as DEFAULT style
DEFAULT gray background white wall sans-serif fonts
STATISTICAL white background white wall sans-serif fonts contrasting color scheme of blues, reds, greens for markers, lines, and filled areas
HTMLBLUE white background white wall sans-serif fonts table colors match the graph colors group distinctions based on color rather than marker or line styles a lighter color scheme for HTML content
ANALYSIS light tan background white wall sans-serif fonts muted color scheme of tans, greens, yellows, oranges and browns for lines, markers, and filled areas
JOURNAL and JOURNAL3 white background white wall sans-serif fonts gray-scale color scheme for markers, lines, and filled areas gray-scale pattern and color scheme for bar fill patterns (JOURNAL3 only)
JOURNAL2 white background white wall sans-serif fonts black-only scheme for markers, lines, and bar fill patterns no solid filled areas—a minimal ink style