This figure illustrates the layout of the legend, as drawn by DrawLegend. Two of six possible arrangements of the color boxes and text are shown. See SetLegendStyle for more information.

Through PHPlot-5.2.0, the width of the color boxes was always char_w, the width of one character (or the width of the upper case letter "E") in the legend text font. Starting with PHPlot-5.3.0, this can be adjusted using a class variable. See Section 4.7.6, “Tuning the Legend” for more.

If point shapes are used in the legend instead of color boxes (see SetLegendUseShapes, added in PHPlot-5.4.0), the same amount of space is still allocated, including width adjustment. But the point shape itself is always drawn at the same size as in the plot, regardless of the width adjustment factor. If the plot area has a color background, the width adjustment will stretch the box in that color which is drawn behind the point shape.

If line markers are used in the legend instead of color boxes (see SetLegendUseShapes, added in PHPlot-6.0.0 for line plots), the width of the area reserved for color boxes is scaled by 4 (along with any 'tuning' adjustment). This leaves enough room to draw a line segment that can be identified visually by color and width.