Appearance

Every visual element in a MathJet chart — graphs, axes, legends, gridlines, text annotations, even the chart frame itself — exposes editable properties controlling its appearance and behavior. Customization happens at two scales: chart-level changes (trace type, coordinate system, axes style, component visibility) that affect how the whole chart is rendered, and per-object changes that edit a specific element’s properties. Both commit instantly — there is no Apply button.

A walk through MathJet's chart appearance system: changing trace types and coordinate systems, adjusting margins and axes styles, toggling component visibility, editing per-graph properties from the context menu, and using the Properties pane for fine-grained control.

Chart-level changes from the toolbar

A row of drop-down menus on the chart’s toolbar provides one-click switching between the most common chart-level configurations. None of these require selecting individual objects — they apply to the chart as a whole, or to all graphs in the chart, depending on the menu.

Change a graph’s trace type after creation

You’re not locked into the trace type you picked when creating the chart. Select an existing graph, then choose a new trace type from the trace-type drop-down — line to bar, line to scatter, surface to mesh, and so on. The new graph reuses the same data source and inherits many properties (color, axis bindings) from the original. The available trace types depend on the data source — a 2D vector and a 3D matrix expose different menus.

If no graph is selected when you change the trace type, the change applies to every graph in the chart. Useful for switching multiple series at once, occasionally confusing if you weren’t expecting it.

Switch coordinate systems

MathJet charts support multiple coordinate systems, including Cartesian, Polar, and Radar. Switch the active system from the coordinate-system drop-down on the toolbar; the axes auto-rescale to fit all graphs within the new system. Most graph types render naturally in more than one coordinate system — a line graph plotted in Polar coordinates becomes a polar plot.

Adjust chart margins

Some coordinate systems — Boundless Cartesian, for example — have no margins by default, letting the data fill the chart frame. Where margins are appropriate, MathJet offers two ways to set them:

• Preset styles from the margins drop-down on the toolbar — common combinations of inner-frame padding chosen for typical use cases.
• Interactive adjustment — drag the position or size of the axes frame inside the chart to set margins by hand.

Change the axes style

Another toolbar drop-down — the axes-style menu — exposes a library of axes styles tuned for different aspect ratios and presentation needs. Pick a style and the chart’s data box and plot box adjust to match. Useful when a chart needs to fit a particular layout (square plot box for symmetry, wide plot box for time series, and so on).

Component visibility

Toggle the visibility of standard chart components from the toolbar’s component-toggle buttons:

• Legends — the auto-generated graph-label control.
• Color bars — the colormap reference for surface or heatmap plots.
• Titles — chart title and axis titles.
• Gridlines — major and minor gridlines, per-axis.
• Axis lines — the axis line itself.
• Tick labels — the numeric or categorical labels on each axis.

One click hides or shows each. The toggle state is per-chart and persists with the workspace.

Per-object property editing

For everything beyond the chart-level toolbar — fine-grained control of an individual graph, axis, legend, gridline, or annotation — MathJet provides three editing surfaces, used in order of typical convenience.

Quick context-menu shortcuts

Right-click most chart objects (graphs, axes, legends, etc.) and the context menu’s top section exposes the most-frequently-edited properties as custom submenus with predefined choices. For a line graph, the typical surface includes:

• Line Width — predefined widths from 1 to 10
• Line Color — a palette of commonly used colors
• Line Style — solid, dashed, dotted, dash-dot

Pick a value from a submenu and the change applies the same instant. The fast path for the most-common edits — no dialog, no pane to find, just one click.

The exact list of quick-edit submenus varies by object type. Axes, legends, color bars, and other objects each have their own top-of-context-menu shortcuts for the properties most commonly edited on that object type.

Properties pane

The Properties pane is docked in the lower-left of the workspace by default. Whenever an object (or set of objects) is selected, the pane shows the editable property set — line attributes, marker styles, fonts, fills, borders, position, behavior, and so on. Edit a value directly in the pane and the change applies to the selected object the same instant. The Properties pane is the most convenient route for properties that aren’t surfaced in the quick context menu, because it’s always already visible — no dialog to open.

Multi-selection works the same way: when several objects share the selection, the pane shows the intersection of their common properties, and edits propagate to all selected objects. Useful for bulk-styling several graphs or aligning the appearance of related annotative objects.

Edit Properties dialog

The full Edit Properties dialog opens via the context menu’s Edit → Properties item, or by double-clicking the object. Its content matches the Properties pane — the same properties organized into the same groups — but as a standalone window rather than a docked pane. Useful if you prefer a separate window or want to compare two objects’ property sets side-by-side by opening two dialogs.

Property groups

The Properties pane and the Edit Properties dialog both organize an object’s properties into related groups. The exact groups vary by object type, but the categories most commonly available include:

• Line — color, width, style (solid, dashed, dotted, dash-dot), smoothing.
• Marker — visibility, shape, size, fill color, edge color, edge width.
• Fill — solid color or pattern, transparency, gradient direction; for surfaces and bars, fill is often the primary visual property.
• Font — typeface, point size, weight (bold), style (italic), color, alignment, LaTeX parsing toggle (for objects that support it).
• Border / Frame — color, width, style, corner rounding.
• Position and size — coordinates of the object’s anchor, dimensions, scale.
• Behavior — visibility, dockability, anchor type, scale-with-parent, z-order.

Common per-object property surfaces

Graphs

For a line graph, the most-edited properties are the Line group (color, width, dash style) and the Marker group (showing or hiding the per-point markers, marker symbol, marker size). For a bar graph, Fill and Border dominate. For a surface plot, Fill (the colormap reference, the surface’s edge color) and Edge (mesh visibility, mesh color) are the primary surfaces. Scatter plots lean on Marker properties exclusively.

Axes

Axis properties cover the visible appearance of the axis line itself (color, weight), tick marks (length, direction, density), tick label format (font, precision, scientific notation, custom format strings), and the gridlines associated with the axis. Most axis-related properties are reached by right-clicking on the axis line itself.

Legends, color bars, marker value tables, and text annotations

These are MathJet’s annotative objects — they all carry the standard Border, Fill, Font, and Position groups plus type-specific properties (legend item layout, color-bar orientation, etc.). Their appearance is edited the same way as graphs and axes. See Annotation for the structural side of these objects (docking, anchoring) and Markers for data-bound marker types.

Gridlines

Gridline color, width, dash style, and visibility are reached either by right-clicking on the gridline directly (the context-menu shortcuts apply), by selecting the gridline and editing in the Properties pane, or by opening the parent axis’s Edit Properties dialog and editing the Gridlines group there.

Live propagation to other panes

Appearance changes propagate through MathJet’s view-coordination layer the same way data changes do. When you change a graph’s line width, color, or marker visibility, the Overview Pane and the Graph Companion table also update to reflect the new styling — they’re rendering the same underlying object, so they catch up automatically. Ctrl+Z undoes an appearance change the same way it undoes any other edit.

Saving appearance with the workspace

All property changes are saved automatically as part of the workspace’s .mjw file. Reopening the workspace restores every chart object’s appearance to the exact state at save time — colors, widths, fonts, sizes, dock positions, visibility states, the lot. No separate “style file” or theme manifest to track.

See also

• Annotation — adding non-data visual elements whose properties are edited the same way.
• Markers — data labels, delta markers, X / Y markers; their appearance properties follow the same Edit Properties pattern, with marker-type-specific extensions.
• Chart layout — controlling how multiple charts share a sheet (chart-level positioning, not per-object appearance).
• Chart and axis splitting — splitting a multi-graph chart into stacked sub-panels or overlapping axes.