Page 130 - Basics of MATLAB and Beyond

3. Add the property you want to set for this type of object (for exam-
ple, LineWidth, FaceColor, FontSize).

We fix ideas with an example.
Suppose we do not like the default figure settings that produce plots
in a white Axes box on a gray Figure background. Instead you want
transparent Axes plotted on a parchment-coloured background. You
also want to increase the size of the font used to label the axes. To
set these preferences for every graphic you draw, change these default
properties:
set(0,’DefaultFigureColor’,[0.95 0.9 0.8]) % parchment
set(0,’DefaultAxesColor’,’none’)
set(0,’DefaultAxesFontSize’,12)
(Capitalization is not essential.) The Axes font size setting affects all
text associated with Axes objects: tick labels, axis labels and titles, but
not Text objects or text on uicontrols. If you want to change these as
well, you could issue the commands:

set(0,’DefaultUIControlFontSize’,12)
set(0,’DefaultTextFontSize’,12)

These sorts of commands often go in your startup.m file, where they
are executed each time matlab starts.

31.3 Current Objects

In matlab graphics there are alway three “current” objects: the current
Figure, the current Axes, and the current Object. The current Figure or
Axes objects are the ones that the next gaphical object will be drawn in.
The current Object is the last one drawn or clicked on with the mouse.
Figures or axes can also be made current by clicking on them with the
mouse. We have already used the functions that return the handle of the
current Axes object (gca) and the current Figure object (gcf). There
is also a gco command that returns the handle of the current Object.
These three commands are essentially abbreviations of:
gcf: get(0,’CurrentFigure’)
gca: get(gcf,’CurrentAxes’)
gco: get(gcf,’CurrentObject’)

Exercise 15 Can you explain the difference between the follow-
ing two methods of getting the current figure handle after doing a
close all? (Answer on page 191.)

>> close all
>> get(0,’currentfigure’)

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