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RainPro has a pre-defined cycle of shading patterns which are used in turn for each filled area (bar, pie-segment, surface) that you draw. The default fills are ‘20%,80%,10%,60%’ to allow shaded bars or pie sectors to be easily distinguished on Black&White printers. To reset the cycle:
chSet 'Patterns' 7 4 3 4 5 © by number
Pattern-0 is ‘no fill’; the next 7 patterns are fills of gradually increasing saturation, and pattern-8 is ‘solid background’. If you intend to print in colour, you might like to set the pattern cycle to ‘Solid’ or a comfortable halftone (80% usually works well) so that all the bars or pie sectors get the same depth of colour. The remaining patterns cover 8 opacities (which work in VML and SVG only) and 16 gradient fills (VML, SVG, PDF).
| 0. Unfilled | 8. Background | 16. 6% opaque | 24. SE-NW gradient | 32. Pipe | |
| 1. 10% colour | 9. Left stripe | 17. 18% opaque | 25. E-W gradient | 33. Drum | |
| 2. 20% colour | 10. Right stripe | 18. 30% opaque | 26. NE-SW gradient | 34. Dome | |
| 3. 30% colour | 11. Hatched | 19. 42% opaque | 27. N-S gradient | 35. Sunrise | |
| 4. Half Tone | 12. Bricks | 20. 54% opaque | 28. NW-SE gradient | 36. TL spotlight | |
| 5. 60% colour | 13. Fishscale | 21. 66% opaque | 29. W-E gradient | 37. BL spotlight | |
| 6. 80% colour | 14. Basket | 22. 78% opaque | 30. SW-NE gradient | 38. BR spotlight | |
| 7. 90% colour | 15. Full colour | 23. 90% opaque | 31. S-N gradient | 39. TR spotlight |
The illustration shows the SVG rendering of these – note that none of the hatchings are implemented in VML, SVG or PDF.
In general the lower-numbered patterns give a more restful effect; use the higher numbers with a dark colour for best results. Opacities are not supported by PDF, so these are emulated by mixing in some background colour as for patterns 1-7. The gradient fills work well in all formats, but there are some minor differences in appearance, as the way fills are specified varies greatly between the various rendering engines. The function Patterns illustrates these for you. Numbers above 40 are free for your own use as custom tiles but it may be better to use numbers above 100 as more preset patterns may be added in the future.