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  Altering the drawarea at runtime
Posted by Danieldeparis on May-04-2019 19:35
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Hi Peter,

Over the last couple yeary we have started to routinely impose "star-based ratings" images onto our CD-based charting output.

Up to now, we simply embedded pictures either as "png-based routines" or using CD standard symbols. They include stars. Which is great. Producing these "integer-based" star ratings material is quite easy indeed :-)

Thanks for the great API!

We now have the request to impose "decimal-ratings" onto the output - see the attachments.

We could possibly use GDI calls - we are on Winxx - or alternative libraries for this. But there is possibly a simpler way to do this right within the CD toolbox.

Any simple way to deliver the output required ? An ability to run this o arbitrary colored png resources would be even greater.

Kind regards, Daniel
integer_ratings.png
decimal_ratings_with_markers.png

  Re: Altering the drawarea at runtime
Posted by Danieldeparis on May-06-2019 14:00
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Hi Peter,

As a supplement to my question, which may or not be clear enough, I am considering an alternative solution that would basically work this way:
1- provide two distinct images ahead of the process - say png resources, one for the full value (say a black or golden star) and one for the null value (ie some sort of blank star),
2- (pre-)load the two of them as drawarea "objects" at runtime,
3- build the "decimal-valued star image" drawarea at runtime from the two resources using the merge functionality upon each plot building,
4- either feed this  "decimal-valued star image" either directly as drawarea or as png when this is required - for example as https://www.advsofteng.com/gallery_scatter.html when used on scatter plots
https://www.advsofteng.com/gallery_scatter.html

Does that seem a reasonable way to provide this "half-colored" images?

Regards, Daniel

  Re: Altering the drawarea at runtime / sorry for "typo"
Posted by Danieldeparis on May-06-2019 15:39
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Hi Peter,

As a supplement to my question, which may or not be clear enough, I am considering an alternative solution that would basically work this way:
1- provide two distinct images ahead of the process - say png resources, one for the full value (say a black or golden star) and one for the null value (ie some sort of blank star),
2- (pre-)load the two of them as drawarea "objects" at runtime,
3- build the "decimal-valued star image" drawarea at runtime from the two resources using the merge functionality upon each plot building,
4- either feed this  "decimal-valued star image" either directly as drawarea or as png when this is required when used as custom images on scatter plots, for example in the "battle Robots" sample in:
https://www.advsofteng.com/gallery_scatter.html

Does that seem a reasonable way to provide this "half-colored" images?

Regards, Daniel

  Re: Altering the drawarea at runtime / sorry for "typo"
Posted by Peter Kwan on May-06-2019 17:00
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Hi Danieldeparis,

It happened ChartDirector has a built-in star symbol. See:

https://www.advsofteng.com/doc/cdnet.htm#builtinsymbols.htm

If you can accept using the built-in star symbol instead of the image, one easier method is to simply create a scatter chart using the built-in star symbol. You can use one scatter layer per symbol. For the symbol color, you can use a "x-zone color", which is a color that changes based on the x-coordinate. See:

https://www.advsofteng.com/doc/cdnet.htm#xzonecolor.htm

Suppose you configure the x-axis to be x = 0 to 3 (eg. using Axis.setLinearScale), and the three symbols are centered at x = 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, and the symbol size is around 0.9 x-axis unit. (I leave a gap of 0.1 x-axis unit between symbols.) So to fill the symbol at 30%, it is like (in C#):

//
// Consider the symbol centered at x = 1.5, y = 0.5
//
int symbolColor = c.xZoneColor(1.5 + 0.9 * (0.3 - 0.5), 0x555555, 0xeeeeee);

// Add the symbol using the above color
c.addScatterLayer(new double[] { 1.5 }, new double[] { 0.5 }, "", symbolColor, 9, symbolColor, symbolColor).setSymbolScale(new double[] { 0.9 }, Chart.XAxisScale);

By putting the above code in a loop, it should be able to generate all the stars.

If you prefer to use images, there is a similar method. Instead of using 0x555555, 0xeeeeee as the colors, you can use the two images two create two pattern colors (BaseChart.patternColor2), and use them to paint a square symbol.

Hope this can help.

Regards
Peter Kwan

  Re: Altering the drawarea at runtime / sorry for "typo"
Posted by Peter Kwan on May-06-2019 17:03
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Hi Danieldeparis,

The addScatterLayer above has a mistake. I forgot about the shape. It should be:

c.addScatterLayer(new double[] { 1.5 }, new double[] { 0.5 }, "", Chart.StarShape(5), 9, symbolColor, symbolColor).setSymbolScale(new double[] { 0.9 }, Chart.XAxisScale);

Regards
Peter Kwan

  Re: Altering the drawarea at runtime / sorry for "typo"
Posted by Danieldeparis on May-08-2019 00:11
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Hi Peter,

Peter Kwan wrote:
Hope this can help.

Thanks for your very detailed feedback on my questions. I'll come back later on this thread once we have settled for a solution.

We will certainly use distinct solutions for CD symbols such as stars and arbitrary png content. There is anyway clearly plenty of alternatives for such a question.

Of course we aim at simple code and, whenever possible, a way to avoid temporary file resources. The speed is clearly always there with CD. And that's great.

Regards for the great support here on the forum:-)
Daniel