How to Configure Gantt Display Settings, Relationship Lines, and Link Highlighting

By XER Reader Team • September 13, 2026 • 4 min read

When communicating complex project schedules to executive stakeholders and project teams, presentation clarity is essential. Dense schedule networks with thousands of overlapping relationship lines can quickly create visual clutter. Through the Main settings interface in XER Reader, schedulers can customize global display options, highlight non-working calendar days, control dependency line visibility rules, and enable interactive hover highlighting for rapid logic tracing.

Accessing the Gantt Setting Main Tab

XER Reader provides centralized control over timeline presentation settings within the Gantt Setting dialog:

In the top toolbar ribbon, click the Views tab and select Gantt Setting (or open Tools → Gantt Setting).
By default, the dialog opens to the Main tab, located at the far left of the tab bar alongside Bar, Timeline, and Data Date.

XER Reader Gantt Setting dialog showing the Main tab with display options, link preferences, and visibility rules — Figure 1: The Main tab in XER Reader Gantt Setting dialog, providing global display toggles, link colors, and relationship visibility options.

Note: The Main tab governs chart visibility, non-working day shading, relationship logic rules, and link colors. If you need to customize bar geometry, progress fills, or text labels, switch to the adjacent Bar tab.

Global Display Options and Non-Working Day Shading

The top section of the Main tab includes core presentation toggles:

Show Gantt Chart: Enables or hides the Gantt timeline pane. When unchecked, the application collapses into a full-width activity spreadsheet view, perfect for data entry and column audits.
Show Text: Globally toggles activity text labels on the timeline. Turning this off creates a streamlined bar chart view ideal for high-level executive overviews.
Highlight Non-working Day: Displays shaded vertical columns across non-working periods (such as weekends and calendar holidays).
Non-working Day Highlight Color: Click the color swatch next to the label to select a subtle background shading color (default light grey) that clearly differentiates active work shifts from calendar breaks.

Configuring Relationship Line Colors and Preferences

Under Link Preference, a dedicated matrix allows schedulers to manage each of the four standard Critical Path Method (CPM) relationship types independently:

Link Type	Abbreviation	Visibility Toggle	Color Customization
Finish to Start	FS	Show Checkbox	Click color swatch to customize (default blue)
Start to Start	SS	Show Checkbox	Click color swatch to customize (default blue)
Finish to Finish	FF	Show Checkbox	Click color swatch to customize (default blue)
Start to Finish	SF	Show Checkbox	Click color swatch to customize (default blue)

Unchecking less common dependency types (such as Start to Finish) simplifies network diagrams by isolating primary construction handoffs and driving relationships.

Setting Link Visibility Rules (When To Show Links)

Large enterprise schedules can contain tens of thousands of relationship connections. To prevent the Gantt view from becoming an unreadable web of connector lines, XER Reader provides three distinct visibility rules under When To Show Links:

When both point are visible: Draws a connector line only if both predecessor and successor activities reside within the currently visible viewport. This is the recommended setting for detailed analysis, as it eliminates distracting horizontal lines passing through unrelated tasks.
When at least one point is visible: Draws connector lines extending off-screen whenever either the source or destination activity is visible. This alerts the analyst that an activity has external dependencies beyond the immediate view.
Don't show: Completely suppresses relationship lines on the timeline while preserving duration bars and milestone markers. This mode provides the cleanest possible visual layout for executive presentations, print handouts, and vector PDF exports.

Interactive Logic Tracing and Hover Highlights

Rather than keeping all connector lines permanently visible, XER Reader includes dynamic relationship highlighting options:

Highlight Link On Hover: When checked, hovering your cursor over any bar or dependency arrow instantly illuminates that specific relationship path in the chosen Link hover color (default magenta). This makes tracing driving predecessor and successor links fast and intuitive.
Highlight Selected Activity Links: When checked, selecting any activity in the table or timeline automatically highlights all incoming predecessor lines and outgoing successor lines in the chosen Selected Activity Links Color (default orange).

Combining the Don't show or When both point are visible rule with Highlight Selected Activity Links delivers the ideal workflow: a clean, uncluttered timeline during normal browsing, with immediate visual logic tracing whenever an activity is selected.

Applying Presentation Settings

After adjusting display options, link colors, and visibility rules, click Apply in the bottom right of the dialog.
The Gantt timeline canvas refreshes immediately, reflecting the new presentation preferences.
Click Close to dismiss the dialog window, or click Reset Default if you wish to restore original factory settings at any time.

XER Reader live Gantt chart timeline showing clean relationship lines connecting task bars and milestone markers — Figure 2: Clean relationship logic lines and activity bars rendered on the live XER Reader timeline.