|
 Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Milan Seijbel on Feb-02-2011 22:39 |
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Dear Peter,
From the messages in this forum I understand that you're planning two new releases this year. One in Q1 and another one at the end of the year.
Can you tell what major features we can expect in these releases?
Kind Regards,
Milan Seijbel |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Feb-03-2011 02:05 |
|
Hi Milan,
Currently, we do not have too much information that we can disclose.
The major improvements in the Q1 release are in "user interactions with charts". Things like "sweep line" when the user moves the cursor will be built-into ChartDirector. There is also a new chart type "3D Scatter Chart" in the Q1 release.
The end of year release will be more focused on improvements in vector graphics, new chart styles, and various graphical improvements.
Hope this can help.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Mahbub on Feb-08-2011 23:55 |
|
Hi Peter, will that new release of chart director have CCI calculation error fixed?
When will the new version be released, March or April?
Thank you for this nice software. |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Feb-09-2011 05:35 |
|
Hi Mahbub,
Yes. It will include the fix for FinanceChart.addCCI.
We have something like 50 editions of ChartDirector for different combination of OS and programming languages. We will try to make the .NET edition available in April 2011.
Hope this can help.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Milan Seijbel on Apr-29-2011 15:55 |
|
Hello Peter,
Is there more news about the release date of the next CD-version?
Regards,
Milan. |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Apr-30-2011 00:37 |
|
Hi Milan,
We are still working on the documentation and the sample code. So I am afraid the .NET release will need to be delayed until May or June.
Regards,
Milan. |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by SK on May-05-2011 09:20 |
|
| When is the release for other versions (particularly perl/php). |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on May-06-2011 01:19 |
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Hi SK,
From past experience, the Perl/PHP will be available around 2 months after we have released the .NET edition. (There are more than 100 combinations of binary incompatible Perl/PHP versions/operating systems combinations, and we need some time to build for all these combinations and test them.)
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Daniel on Feb-09-2011 01:54 |
|
Thank you for sharing, Peter.
I'd be glad to know where you intend to go in terms of vector-based-graphic-format support.
I reckon - I may be wrong - that you mentioned some kind of pdf support at some stage in the past. I'd be glad to know whether this is still on the developpers' table. Pdf delivery currently requires png embedding. Which is ok but certainly not perfect when it comes to delivering raster graphics that include small fonts. |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Feb-09-2011 05:43 |
|
Hi Daniel,
Currently, ChartDirector can output charts in various standard formats, such as PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, SVG. You can use any of these formats to create the PDF, provided the software you use to generate the PDF support the format. If your PDF generation software supports SVG, you can certainly use SVG (a vector graphics format) in PDF.
For expanding our vector graphics support, we will include PDF (our highest priority), WPF and Silverlight. Other things we are looking at are HTML 5 (current support by browsers are too limited, but may eventually becomes popular), EMF (useful on Windows, but the format is too primitive to support complex graphics with alpha transparency) and Flash (useful, but may not work on Apple mobile products).
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Daniel on Feb-09-2011 21:39 |
|
I am no great fan of SVG but I certainly appreciate the fact that you support it. A clear entry in the area of vector-based formats.
"For expanding our vector graphics support, we will include PDF (our highest priority), WPF and Silverlight. Other things we are looking at are HTML 5 (current support by browsers are too limited, but may eventually becomes popular), EMF (useful on Windows, but the format is too primitive to support complex graphics with alpha transparency) and Flash (useful, but may not work on Apple mobile products)."
Thank you for the detailed information. As a regular user who has spent quite a bit of time working with chartdirector API, I hope that I am alone to appreciate the great effort made into this great piece of engineering  |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Daniel on Oct-03-2011 16:56 |
|
"The end of year release will be more focused on improvements in vector graphics, new chart styles, and various graphical improvements."
Any news on the delivery of the coming new versions? Especially on your work in progress on integration of vector-based output? HTML5, pdf, EMF and al!
No hurry here. Just interested in the long term view:) |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Oct-04-2011 02:12 |
|
Hi Daniel,
The next version (called Ver 5.1) is close to completion. We are now writing sample code and documentation for it.
However, our focus for this version has changed to improve user interaction. The major feature in this release will be what we call "programmable mouse cursor library". This allows the developer to create effects similar to Yahoo Finance or Google Finance (when the mouse cursor moves over the plot area, they will be "tracking dots" and the legend box will show the data values on the day under the mouse cursor). As the user interaction is "programmable", the developer can create many other effects, such as such as showing the tracking data values as axis labels, with vertical and/or horizontal sweep line or crosshair cursor, or with labels that tracks the data points, etc..
The vector graphics improvements is now rescheduled to Ver 6.0.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by SK on Oct-07-2011 02:47 |
|
| Sweet. For web, are there plans for supporting HTML5 (Canvas based rendering) ? Things are changing fast and the web is trying to move away from plugins (flash, java, sl etc). Right now we have images served from the server which has a latency. |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Oct-08-2011 01:28 |
|
Hi SK,
Yes. Vector graphics (including HTML5 Canvas based rendering) is high in our wish list. It will likely be available in the next major version of ChartDirector (but it would not be in 2011).
Hope this can help.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by SK on Oct-16-2011 14:53 |
|
| So Peter, are there any beta versions for the 2011 release available for trial ? |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Oct-18-2011 00:40 |
|
Hi SK,
Whereas we now have the beta DLL for .NET, there is no documentation or a complete set of sample code. So we need to follow up very closely with the beta tester to explain how to use it. Because of this, we can only provide beta release on a case by case basis, usually for customers that have specific requirements that can be addressed by the beta release.
A few days ago, we have uploaded a beta release with selected sample code in the following thread to address the 3D scatter chart requirement. If you are interested, you may download to have a look:
http://www.chartdir.com/forum/download_thread.php?site=chartdir&bn=chartdir_support&thread=1318441031#N1318619007
Hope this can help.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Andrew Schmidt on Jan-07-2012 01:50 |
|
How's the next release looking? Any update?
Cheers, |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Jan-10-2012 02:19 |
|
Hi Andrew,
For the .NET release, the DLL and the sample code have been completed for quite a while. What is missing is the documentation, which we are still writing. It should be available soon.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Andrew on Jan-14-2012 11:56 |
|
What's the order for the other languages,.. more specifically, the PHP version.
Cheers,
Andrew |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Tobi on Jan-20-2012 09:04 |
|
Yes, good question. As much I as I love ChartDirector, it is unbelievable to announce new versions on early 2011 and still no news in 2012... Beside the crappy webpage (have I heard this to be redone December 2011 on this forum?), you must work on the release stuff of new versions.
For me, you cannot announce releases in 2011 for .NET and release the same version for PHP in 2014... Something seems not working well on your release cycle. We have moved away from ChartDirector for this reason. Unfortunately.
Bye
Tobi |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Pete Benes on Jan-23-2012 07:36 |
|
Tobi wrote:
Something seems not working well on your release cycle. We have moved away from ChartDirector for this reason. Unfortunately.
ByeTobi
Tobi, if you're no longer using CD why are you even posting here?
Having said that, an update on the next release would be great. |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Jan-24-2012 01:24 |
|
Hi Pete,
We apologize very much for the delay in the next release.
For the .NET edition, the code and the sample code have been completed. What is dragging us now is the documentation effort. We expect the documentation will be completed by Feb 2012.
After the .NET edition, we will probably work on the Java edition. We expect porting will be fast, because Java code is very similar to C# code (and also we have already ported a substantial portion of the code). Also, most of the sample code and the documentation do not need to be rewritten or manually translated.
(In our system, the sample code and the documentation is written in a special "generic format", and we have special tools to translate them to different languages C#, VB.NET, JSP/Java, PHP, Perl, Python, C++, Ruby, ColdFusion. That's why they take quite some time for us to develop, as they are written in a way that can be translated for all programming language editions of ChartDirector.)
Next in line will be PHP, Perl, Python. They are easy to port as they are either command line or web only. (There is no client side GUI framework like MFC, QT, ActiveX, etc, which are more difficult to port.)
Then we will address C++, which requires porting to the MFC and QT framework.
Finally, we will do Ruby and ColdFusion.
The last time we released an update, it took around 2 months from the from the first release to the last release. (There are around 50 releases for different programming language and operating system combinations.)
The last time we released an update, we uploaded the updates as they were available without announcing them immediately. We announced the update and changed our web site when all editions of ChartDirector were updated. We may probably do something similar ths time.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chartdirector releases 2011 |
| Posted by Andrew Schmidt on Jan-26-2012 00:45 |
|
Thanks for the info.
Do you guys have a feature list of what's in the next release?
Cheers, |
| Thanks for the information! |
| Posted by Daniel on Jan-26-2012 15:28 |
|
Peter,
Thanks for the information! This long list of supported platforms is one of the key factors that makes chartdirector so valuable.
As users, we can sometimes share the impatience on display here ... But I expect most of us here do value this multi-platform support a lot. Keep the good work.
In this respect, ie the impatience on display at times, it is key that you offer regular feedback on your roadmap and possible stumbling blocks. So we can fine-tune our own scheduling:) |
| Re: Thanks for the information! |
| Posted by Milan on Jan-26-2012 22:21 |
|
Hi Peter,
thanks for the update on the new version.
Initially you planned to release 2 new versions before now. I quote from your initial reply:
---------------------
The major improvements in the Q1 release are in "user interactions with charts". Things like "sweep line" when the user moves the cursor will be built-into ChartDirector. There is also a new chart type "3D Scatter Chart" in the Q1 release.
The end of year release will be more focused on improvements in vector graphics, new chart styles, and various graphical improvements.
------------------------
Are these plans now combined in the coming release?
Regards,
Milan |
| Re: Thanks for the information! |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Jan-26-2012 23:47 |
|
Hi,
The main feature in the next version is what we called "Programmable Track Cursor".
When the mouse moves across the plot area, a vertical "track line" can be drawn. The legend can be updated dynamically to reflect the data value on the track line. There can also be floating dots that show the data points. You may put floating labels next to the data points or next to the mouse cursor to show their values or other information. There can be horizontal lines joining the data points to the y-axes with floating axis labels to showing their values. Instead of a "track line", the cursor can be a "track box".
The whole system is "programmable", so you may develop other kinds of track cursor styles or modify existing styles to fit you needs.
The programmable track cursor is specially designed to that it can integrate seemlessly with the Zooming and Scrolling mouse user interface, and works in Realtime chart and FinanceChart too.
New APIs are added to the "Zooming and Scrolling framework" in ChartDirector to significantly simplify the coding.
The above are the main user interface improvements. For the chart types, there is a new 3D Scatter Chart type.
There are various others miscellaneous improvements. For example, the spline curve can now be in 3D style to become "spline strips", with configurable lighting effects. In total, there are probably over 100 new methods introduced in the next version of ChartDirector.
Unluckily, the "improvements in vector graphics" part is not combined into the next release. It will still be in the release after the next release.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Thanks for the information! |
| Posted by Andrew Schmidt on Jan-27-2012 10:12 |
|
Cool thanks for the info!
Peter Kwan wrote:
There are various others miscellaneous improvements. For example, the spline curve can
now be in 3D style to become "spline strips", with configurable lighting effects. In total,
there are probably over 100 new methods introduced in the next version of ChartDirector.
Any chance drop shadow effects on individual lines for line graphs make it in one of those
100 new methods? (like $line->addDropShadow())
The reason I'm asking, is that for future graphs I create, whether to bother with the current
complicated way of add shadows to lines. Or just wait for the next version of CD.
line drop shadows make the graph look soo much better. (see attached). I'm sure your
gallery would also be greatly improved too =)
|
| Re: Thanks for the information! |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Jan-28-2012 00:54 |
|
Hi Andrew,
Unluckily, it is too late to add drop shadow support now for the Feb 2012 release. We will probably support it in the release after that.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Thanks for the information! |
| Posted by Michael Opitz on Feb-28-2012 17:54 |
|
Hi Peter,
any updates on the next release, so far?
Regards,
Michael |
| Re: Thanks for the information! |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Feb-28-2012 23:56 |
|
Hi Michael,
For the .NET edition of ChartDirector, there is now a release candidate at:
http://www.advsofteng.com/chartdir_net.zip
We are in the process of porting it to other programming language editions of ChartDirector.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| The help file is helpful :) |
| Posted by Daniel on Mar-01-2012 18:09 |
|
Hi all,
Thank Peter for the great work:) It is certainly not an easy task to upgrade a meaty product with so many deployment options. Even more so with a product that tries to work both on the graphic generation and the interactivity.
The help file is helpful and allow us to grasp what is new even if we do not use the upgrade immediately. It would be sure helpful to have some kind of detailed "what''s new" on top. It is possibly in the process of been made!
Daniel |
| Re: The help file is helpful :) |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Mar-02-2012 02:06 |
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Hi Daniel,
The "What's New" will be included in the release notes. Usually, we write a single "What's New" that includes all editions of ChartDirector. Currently, there is still a chance of some last minute changes or additions to address issues we may discover during porting to other editions of ChartDirector. So we tend to delay writing the release notes until all the key editions of ChartDirector are ready.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: The help file is helpful :) |
| Posted by Michael Opitz on Apr-12-2012 16:17 |
|
Hello Peter,
do you have an update of the next java-version? Is there a beta version available yet?
Regards,
Michael |
| Re: The help file is helpful :) |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Apr-12-2012 23:15 |
|
Hi Michael,
Yes. The release candidate for the ChartDirector for Java Ver 5.1 is at:
http://www.advsofteng.com/chartdir_java_510rc.zip
Hope this can help.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: The help file is helpful :) |
| Posted by Michael Opitz on Apr-13-2012 20:40 |
|
Hi Peter,
thank you very much for the information. I tested it and ran our tests against it. But I have a problem:
I created a gantt chart and added Chart.CTime-data to the BoxWhiskerLayer. I added this time information to the hotspots with the {high} and {low} mnemonics.
My code looks like this:
String dateOffset = String.valueOf((long)Chart.CTime(new Date(0)));
String hotspots = "low="+"{={bottom} - "+dateOffset+'}'+'&'+"high="+"{={top} - "+dateOffset+'}'
layer.setHTMLImageMap(href, hotspots, tooltip);
In ChartDirector 4.1 I had values != 0 for low and high, but in ChartDirector 5.1 I have '0' for low and high.
Is this a bug or do I have to change something?
Regards,
Michael |
| Re: The help file is helpful :) |
| Posted by Michael Opitz on Apr-13-2012 20:42 |
|
| Sorry, I meant {bottom} and {top} mnemonics. |
| Re: The help file is helpful :) |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Apr-14-2012 02:53 |
|
Hi Michael,
This is in fact a bug in ChartDirector Ver 5.0. Parameter expressions (eg. {={bottom}+1}) involving dates do not work if they are in the URL or in the query parameter. However, isolated parameters like {bottom} works normally, and parameter expressions in tooltips also works.
We will fix it an update the Ver 5.1 release candidate shortly (possibly during weekend).
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: The help file is helpful :) |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Apr-17-2012 00:22 |
|
Hi Michael,
I have just updated the release candidate for the ChartDirector for Java Ver 5.1 at:
http://www.advsofteng.com/chartdir_java_510rc.zip
This should fix the problem in parameter expressions involving dates in query parameters.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: The help file is helpful :) |
| Posted by Michael Opitz on Apr-17-2012 19:00 |
|
Hi Peter,
thank you very much for the update. The expression works, but occasionally I have some rounding-issues.
With Chartdirector 4.1 I always had long values but now, I have a double value:
Expected: high=1033796, But is: high=1033795.999992.
On an other value I tried to format this value as a timspan with:
{=(({top}-{bottom})-({top}-{bottom})%86400)/86400|0 {=({top}-{bottom})|hh:nn:ss}
Here I have differences in the seconds:
Expected : (high-low)=4548040 => value=52 15:20:40
But is; value=52 15:20:39 (one second missing).
An other point I recognized is the automatic scaling of the y-axis:
If I do not set a format, ChartDirector 4.1 scaled the axis like:
0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, ... 0.9, 1, 1.1, etc.
Now, I have 0.0, 0.1, etc.
Is there a way to hide ".0", as it was the default in CD4.1?
Regards,
Michael
p.s. I like, that you do not create area-tags for invisible labels anymore! |
| Re: The help file is helpful :) |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Apr-18-2012 00:51 |
|
Hi Michael,
I will look into the rounding issues in more detail. The rounding issue may be because in the latest version, we support millisecond formatting. For your case, you may try the following method to work around, which uses rounding to the nearest integer, instead of truncation.
{=(({top}-{bottom})-({top}-{bottom})%86400)/86400|0 {=({top}-{bottom}+0.4999)|hh:nn:ss}
In your original formatting, the "{xxx|0}" rounds to the nearest integer. On the other hand, for time formatting, it is customary to use truncation instead of rounding for different components of the time. For example, if hh:nn is used, 04:59:59 will be shown as 04:59, not 05:00. Similarly, for hh:nn:ss formatting, 04:59:59.999 will be shown as 04:59:59, not the 05:00:00. So the behaviour of the left and right hand sides are different. If you add 0.4999 to the right hand side, it will effectively become rounding to the nearest integer, and the two may become consistent.
(I do not remember what is the behaviour of ChartDirector Ver 4.x. As ChartDirector Ver 4.x does not support the millisecond component in formatting, it may instead format 04:59:59.999 to 05:00:00, masking out the rounding error. Of course, the correct solution is to avoid the rounding error.)
For the axis label formatting, in ChartDirector Ver 5, by default, ChartDirector would format the axis labels so that they have the same number of decimal places. It was because many of our customers asked for this type of formatting when we were as ChartDirector Ver 4. In ChartDirector Ver 4, each labels will use the minimum number of decimal place, so different labels on the axis may have different number of decimal places.
To revert to ChartDirector Ver 4 behaviour, you would need to use:
c.yAxis().setLabelFormat("{value}");
Hope this can help.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
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