Thanks, Robert. As a guy who is often working with SAS graphics tools or other SAS software at times when almost everyone else in his time zone is sleeping, I relate to the hidden message. The image reminds me of Mr. Pitt's vision quest on Seinfeld. Only Elaine and Kramer were able to see it. Steven J Subichin and I were early SAS/GRAPH users who created white space "holes" in the US map to CLEARLY display annotation of little tables of data inside each state, which were filled with color to match a legend for the response level. Some annotation had to be located offshore in the Atlantic Ocean with an arrow back to the state, when the state was too small. I think that eventually SAS/GRAPH was made able to address this need, but with only a halo of white space around the text rather than a rectangle. In some states, I "clipped" the rectangle into a polygon to avoid crossing the state boundary. Those were pre-web days, and now, of course, one can deliver "soft" annotation via ALT text (the pop-up box exposed with mouse work). But we needed to create hardcopy maps, and for the online displays then in use there was no pop-up text feature. I've always enjoyed PROC GMAP, and coined the word "InfoGeographics" to describe what it can deliver. The SAS/GRAPH nomenclature for what we generated with PROC GMAP is CHOROPLETH maps, and the mapping profession calls them thematic maps.

Regards,
LeRoy Bessler