Next: Entity Shapes, Previous: Implicit Entity Definition, Up: Specifying Entities [Contents]
By default, when an entity is defined, its heading is drawn at that location. If
the entity name is preceeded by the hide
keyword or the show=no
attribute is specified at the entity definition then the entity heading is not
drawn at the location of the definition. It is drawn later, if/when the entity
is turned on by using show
followed by the entity name or by setting
show=yes
. Note that multiple entities can be listed after both
show
and hide
. It is also possible to specify other attributes for
entities after these keywords.
Mentioning an entity after its definition either preceeded by show
or
with show=yes
will cause
an entity heading to be drawn into the chart even if the entity is already shown.
This can be useful for long charts, see Defining Entities for examples.
You can display all of the entity headings using the heading;
command, as
well. This command displays an entity heading for all (currently showing)
entities. This may be useful after a newpage;
command, see Commands.
However, the best practice is to use ‘newpage [auto_heading=yes];’ instead,
since it only shows the heading when the chart is viewed per-page (which is the
same for page breaks inserted by automatic pagination).
Using the show
and hide
commands in themselves with no entity
specified after, will make all entities show or hide. (Same with
activate
and deactivate
.) See the example below.
![]() | ![]() |
Note that entity related commands are merged. Thus saying show; hide A;
will show all entities, except A
in a single line of entity headings.
If you want to manipulate entities in separate visual lines, insert a nudge;
command in between the entity manipulating commands (as at the end of the example
above).
Next: Entity Shapes, Previous: Implicit Entity Definition, Up: Specifying Entities [Contents]