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The ‘stacking order’ of items


The order in which the various elements on the calendar are displayed/printed determines their ‘stacking’ order if the user chooses to introduce overlapping elements in the design. The different formats exhibit slightly different stacking orders.
The calendar outline is always rendered last, so will always be ‘on top of’ everything. On the display it will then be obvious when any other element is outside the calendar area. When printing, the user has the choice of switching the calendar outline on/off and it is assumed that the only reason for choosing to print it will be to show post-printing cutting lines - for which its full visibility ‘on top’ would seem sensible.
The order of other elements depends on the format being used. In Formats 6 & 9 the order has been chosen deliberately to ensure the single column of days/dates is ‘above’ the blank area. This gives extra design flexibility.
In other formats, the relationship between the day & date areas is less important to the design options.
In all cases, the background (box-fill) colour is always rendered before any text, and the outline/grid after the text.
Ignoring the graphics areas for the moment, the Year and Month elements (in that order) are rendered after the above items and will therefore always appear ‘on top’ of the date/day/weeks if overlapping occurs. Again, their respective box-fill colours will be rendered before the text - and the box outline after the text.
The pictures, by user choice, can either be rendered before the date/day/week elements or just before the calendar outline. So they can be either ‘right at the bottom’ or ‘right at the top’ of all other elements - except for the calendar outline. This choice can be made individually for each picture and their respective frames will follow the user-choices if a picture area is activated but no picture is actually displayed/printed.
The combination of the stacking order and the transparent box-fill options (see later) provides many opportunities for creative designs.





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