(octave.info)Managing Default Properties

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15.3.5 Managing Default Properties
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Object properties have two classes of default values, “factory defaults”
(the initial values) and “user-defined defaults”, which may override the
factory defaults.

   Although default values may be set for any object, they are set in
parent objects and apply to child objects, of the specified object type.
For example, setting the default ‘color’ property of ‘line’ objects to
"green", for the ‘root’ object, will result in all ‘line’ objects
inheriting the ‘color’ "green" as the default value.

     set (groot, "defaultlinecolor", "green");

sets the default line color for all objects.  The rule for constructing
the property name to set a default value is

     default + OBJECT-TYPE + PROPERTY-NAME

   This rule can lead to some strange looking names, for example
‘defaultlinelinewidth"’ specifies the default ‘linewidth’ property for
‘line’ objects.

   The example above used the root figure object so the default property
value will apply to all line objects.  However, default values are
hierarchical, so defaults set in a figure objects override those set in
the root figure object.  Likewise, defaults set in axes objects override
those set in figure or root figure objects.  For example,

     subplot (2, 1, 1);
     set (groot, "defaultlinecolor", "red");
     set (1, "defaultlinecolor", "green");
     set (gca (), "defaultlinecolor", "blue");
     line (1:10, rand (1, 10));
     subplot (2, 1, 2);
     line (1:10, rand (1, 10));
     figure (2)
     line (1:10, rand (1, 10));

produces two figures.  The line in first subplot window of the first
figure is blue because it inherits its color from its parent axes
object.  The line in the second subplot window of the first figure is
green because it inherits its color from its parent figure object.  The
line in the second figure window is red because it inherits its color
from the global root figure parent object.

   To remove a user-defined default setting, set the default property to
the value "remove".  For example,

     set (gca (), "defaultlinecolor", "remove");

removes the user-defined default line color setting from the current
axes object.  To quickly remove all user-defined defaults use the
‘reset’ function.

 -- : reset (H)
     Reset the properties of the graphic object H to their default
     values.

     For figures, the properties "position", "units", "windowstyle", and
     "paperunits" are not affected.  For axes, the properties "position"
     and "units" are not affected.

     The input H may also be a vector of graphic handles in which case
     each individual object will be reset.

     See also: Note: cla, Note: clf, *note newplot:
     XREFnewplot.

   Getting the "default" property of an object returns a list of
user-defined defaults set for the object.  For example,

     get (gca (), "default");

returns a list of user-defined default values for the current axes
object.

   Factory default values are stored in the root figure object.  The
command

     get (groot, "factory");

returns a list of factory defaults.