Overwrite default values of pgf keys

Question

I defined a pgf key with a default value. In the following code I can overwrite its value in the default argument I created but I can't change the value using the pgfsetkeyvalue macro.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\usepackage{tikz}
\pgfkeys{
   /titleblock/.is family, /titleblock,
   titlesize/.default = 48,
   titlesize/.store in = \titlesize,
   titlesize
}

\newcommand{\titleblock}[1][]{%
   \pgfkeys{/titleblock/.cd, #1}%
    \node[align=left, inner sep=0mm, outer sep=0mm,
    font={\fontsize{\titlesize}{2\titlesize}\selectfont}]
    (title) 
    at (0,0)
    {This is my test title};
}


\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
  \titleblock
\end{tikzpicture}


 \begin{tikzpicture}
   \titleblock[titlesize=25pt]
 \end{tikzpicture}

\pgfkeyssetvalue{/titleblock/titlesize}{10}

\begin{tikzpicture}
  \titleblock
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

Is there anyway that I can change this value without using the optional argument of \titleblock?

Answer 1

Key /titleblock/titlesize does not store the value directly, but defines a handler to store it in \titlesize. Therefore, \pgfkeys and friends can be used for setting as done in \titleblock:

\pgfkeys{/titleblock/titlesize=10}

or with a setup command:

\newcommand*{\titleblocksetup}{\pgfqkeys{/titleblock}}
...
\titleblocksetup{titlesize=10}

Full example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\usepackage{tikz}
\pgfkeys{
   /titleblock/.is family, /titleblock,
   titlesize/.default = 48,
   titlesize/.store in = \titlesize,
   titlesize
}
\newcommand*{\titleblocksetup}{\pgfqkeys{/titleblock}}

\newcommand{\titleblock}[1][]{%
   \pgfkeys{/titleblock/.cd, #1}%
    \node[align=left, inner sep=0mm, outer sep=0mm,
    font={\fontsize{\titlesize}{2\titlesize}\selectfont}]
    (title)
    at (0,0)
    {This is my test title};
}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
  \titleblock
\end{tikzpicture}


 \begin{tikzpicture}
   \titleblock[titlesize=25pt]
 \end{tikzpicture}

\titleblocksetup{titlesize=10}

\begin{tikzpicture}
  \titleblock
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

Answer 2

As Heiko says, the problem is that \pgfkeyssetvalue does not invoke the handler so \titlesize is not set by \pgfkeyssetvalue{/titleblock/titlesize}{10}.

When I use pgfkeys I prefer to store the values in the keys rather than have the keys define macros because this seems inefficient to me. This is how I would code your example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\pgfkeys{/titleblock/.is family, /titleblock,
   titlesize/.initial = 25,% initial value of key
}

\newcommand{\titleblock}[1][]{%
   \pgfkeys{/titleblock, #1}%
   \pgfkeysgetvalue{/titleblock/titlesize}{\titlesize}% key val -> \titlesize
   \node[align=left, inner sep=0mm, outer sep=0mm,
         font={\fontsize{\titlesize}{2\titlesize}\selectfont}]
        (title) at (0,0) {This is my test title};
}

\begin{document}

    \begin{tikzpicture}
      \titleblock
    \end{tikzpicture}

    \begin{tikzpicture}
      \titleblock[titlesize=15]
    \end{tikzpicture}

    \pgfkeyssetvalue{/titleblock/titlesize}{10}% set key value

    \begin{tikzpicture}
      \titleblock
    \end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

The output is much the same as what Heiko has, but not as pretty:

In the \titleblock macro I have extracted the current key value into the macro \titlesize. This isn't really necessary but I didn't want to write

font={\fontsize{\pgfkeysvalueof{/titleblock/titlesize}}%
               {2\pgfkeysvalueof{/titleblock/titlesize}}\selectfont}

Finally, I have actually used font sizes of 25, 15 and 10, respectively. This is only because I took out the \usepackage{fontspec} line and used pdflatex.