TChart 2010 - lost data

[UserLS]

I just downloaded new version and run into a few major problems:

• If I set an axis title to " " and immediately ask what is the title it returns an empty string. Sorry, " " != "". This causes a big problem in our system since setting it to a blank (but not empty) value is a trigger to use our custom drawing code, and now it simply does not work! In general I do not understand why you are changing value which user provided for a property? If I need it to be trimmed, I will do it myself, but there are tons of reasons why I'd like to add spaces before or after the text and you should not break it for me.
• If I set any wall (except for the back wall, which works) to use an image to fill background (which was working OK in previous build) - now only sides of the wall are respecting my selection, the face becomes clear fill.
• You have reported a while ago that bar graphs with stack option set to side all works... Well, you did fix the series marks (they appear to work now). But the axis labels are totally broken. Just create 4-5 bar series, set them to SideAll and watch the labels (they are sometimes showing up under every other series, while sometimes just in random places).
• Most of my graphs with multiple series (but not all. So far I cannot tell what is the difference) have very strange legends. All of them are set to show series titles or automatic (which would be the same in this case). In the legend I have only first item to show up with the name. All other items have only symbols but nothing next to them (does it make any sense?)
• You said that legend dividers are fixes. While they are working much better, on horizontal legend we still have a divider line before the first column, but now it starts from the second line... It looks really strange and sloppy.

legend.jpg (132.21 KiB) Viewed 12035 times

One side comment. Even though I do not develop TChart, but just to be able to use it and move from one release to another, currently I am running around 5500 automated tests, exercising only basic functions of TChart. You guys should be doing it, not me. This way, if anything is fixed once you will never break it again (or will know about breakage within minutes) and if you say it is fixed, you'll have proof that in fact it is.

[UserLS]

In fact, legend drawing is totally broken. I have a graph with one series and the legend is set up to show values. Well, the first item in the legend is showing the item name, not the first value. Then I am trying to change the text style to display value and percent or X value and value... Good luck to those who can do it, I cannot get it work at all. And no, I am not using the chart editor, I am setting up all the properties programmatically (may be there is a new property I need to set, or existing one changed its default value?)

[Narcís]

Hi UserLS,

* If I set an axis title to " " and immediately ask what is the title it returns an empty string. Sorry, " " != "". This causes a big problem in our system since setting it to a blank (but not empty) value is a trigger to use our custom drawing code, and now it simply does not work! In general I do not understand why you are changing value which user provided for a property? If I need it to be trimmed, I will do it myself, but there are tons of reasons why I'd like to add spaces before or after the text and you should not break it for me.

I've reproduce this problem and added it to the bug-list with ID. TF02014867.

* If I set any wall (except for the back wall, which works) to use an image to fill background (which was working OK in previous build) - now only sides of the wall are respecting my selection, the face becomes clear fill.

I have reproduce this one too and added it to the list (TF02014868).

* You have reported a while ago that bar graphs with stack option set to side all works... Well, you did fix the series marks (they appear to work now). But the axis labels are totally broken. Just create 4-5 bar series, set them to SideAll and watch the labels (they are sometimes showing up under every other series, while sometimes just in random places).

I'm not able to reproduce this one or I may not understand which is the exact problem. Using the code snippet below I get this image, which is expected result for me. Is that what you get? Can you modify the code below or let us know which is the problem in the image?

BarsSideAll.jpg (81.24 KiB) Viewed 11954 times

Code: Select all

      for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++)
      {
        Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar bar1 = new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar(tChart1.Chart);
        bar1.FillSampleValues();
        bar1.MultiBar = Steema.TeeChart.Styles.MultiBars.SideAll;
      }

* Most of my graphs with multiple series (but not all. So far I cannot tell what is the difference) have very strange legends. All of them are set to show series titles or automatic (which would be the same in this case). In the legend I have only first item to show up with the name. All other items have only symbols but nothing next to them (does it make any sense?)

This works fine for me here as you can see in the image above. Can you send a simple example we can run "as-is" to reproduce the problem here?

* You said that legend dividers are fixes. While they are working much better, on horizontal legend we still have a divider line before the first column, but now it starts from the second line... It looks really strange and sloppy.

I'm not able to reproduce this adding the line below to the code snippet above. Can you please post some code to reproduce this?

Code: Select all

      tChart1.Legend.Alignment = Steema.TeeChart.LegendAlignments.Bottom;

One side comment. Even though I do not develop TChart, but just to be able to use it and move from one release to another, currently I am running around 5500 automated tests, exercising only basic functions of TChart. You guys should be doing it, not me. This way, if anything is fixed once you will never break it again (or will know about breakage within minutes) and if you say it is fixed, you'll have proof that in fact it is.

Thanks for your suggestion. Actually we already do some of this. For example, the features demo is an important test field for us. Anyway, I'll bring your suggestion to the team.

In fact, legend drawing is totally broken. I have a graph with one series and the legend is set up to show values. Well, the first item in the legend is showing the item name, not the first value. Then I am trying to change the text style to display value and percent or X value and value... Good luck to those who can do it, I cannot get it work at all. And no, I am not using the chart editor, I am setting up all the properties programmatically (may be there is a new property I need to set, or existing one changed its default value?)

Code below shows a legend with all series values for me.

Code: Select all

      Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar bar1 = new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar(tChart1.Chart);
      bar1.FillSampleValues();

Adding code below also works fine for me. Can you please send us a simple example we can run "as-is" to reproduce the problem here?

Code: Select all

      tChart1.Legend.TextStyle = Steema.TeeChart.LegendTextStyles.XAndPercent;
      //tChart1.Legend.TextStyle = Steema.TeeChart.LegendTextStyles.XAndValue;

Thanks in advance.

[UserLS]

In order to see the problem with Bars set to Side All you'll need to set bottom axis to show labels (you told me that this is the system's limitation and numbers or dates will not work at all). In your example the bottom axis labels do not make any sense, so I am not sure why you even included it. Here is the example with labels:

3D.SideAll.png (46.59 KiB) Viewed 11949 times

As to divider on legend, I am not sure how this works for you. Here what I am getting when I put my legend to the bottom (notice that they do not go too far down as they used to, but now they do not start at the top either):

Dividers.Symbol(Left).Rectangle.Solid.NoBorder.png (89.68 KiB) Viewed 11948 times

[Narcís]

Hi UserLS,

In order to see the problem with Bars set to Side All you'll need to set bottom axis to show labels (you told me that this is the system's limitation and numbers or dates will not work at all).

Ok, I could reproduce this one now and added it (TF02014870) to the bug list.

In your example the bottom axis labels do not make any sense, so I am not sure why you even included it.

You should understand that companies/users in other business sectors have different needs. Sometimes you can hardly figure why someone could use something but they can easily justify it.

As to divider on legend, I am not sure how this works for you. Here what I am getting when I put my legend to the bottom (notice that they do not go too far down as they used to, but now they do not start at the top either):

Using this code:

Code: Select all

      for (int i = 0; i < 16; i++)
      {
        Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar bar1 = new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar(tChart1.Chart);
        bar1.MultiBar = Steema.TeeChart.Styles.MultiBars.SideAll;
        bar1.FillSampleValues();
      }

      tChart1.Legend.Alignment = Steema.TeeChart.LegendAlignments.Bottom;
      tChart1.Legend.DividingLines.Visible = true;
      tChart1.Legend.Pen.Visible = false;

Produces this chart:

LegendDividingLines.jpg (98.74 KiB) Viewed 11945 times

The only dividing line I can see here wrongly painted is the first one. Other lines may not get to the top or bottom of the legend either but this almost a one-pixel issue only. I have added this issue to the bug list too (TF02014871). If you think that in some other circumstances dividing lines go wrong please modify the code snippet above so that we can reproduce the problem here.

Thanks in advance.

[Narcís]

Hi UserLS,

As an update to TF02014867, we found there's an easy workaround to it:

Code: Select all

      string tmp = " ";
      this.Text = tmp.Length.ToString();
      tChart1.Header.Lines = new string[] { tmp };
      //tChart1.Header.Text = tmp;
      this.Text += " - " + tChart1.Header.Text.Length.ToString();

The issue is that Text setter of Drawing.TextShape is doing a Trim on the string to remove white spaces. Modifying this could be a problem, as it could mean that clients see headers and anything that derives from TextShape (series marks, annotations etc. etc.) with spaces in the text where before there weren't any.

[UserLS]

I am not sure how this can work for me, since if there is anything in the title - I will show it as the title and the custom drawing will kick off only if the title is " ". Also, you said

Modifying this could be a problem, as it could mean that clients see headers and anything that derives from TextShape (series marks, annotations etc. etc.) with spaces in the text where before there weren't any.

which is not totally correct, since you have started trimming spaces only with new, 2009, release, therefore already breaking existing clients graphs (I might want to add more spaces before and after graph title so the shape would be bigger, which is not possible anymore), and existing clients will not see any spaces, that were not there before, since they have seen them, and if they did not want them - they have a very easy way to get rid of them (unlike me, who is stuck with new wrong behavior and cannot reproduce graphs I had with previous version at all!)

[Narcís]

Hello UserLS,

We found that Trim was added in for the bug fix to TF02014704, which appeared in the last public maintenance release. It seems that this line is not essential to the bug fix, so it has been removed and hence TF02014867 has been fixed.

[Narcís]

Hello UserLS,

Just wanted to let you know that TF02014868 has also been fixed for next maintenance release.

[UserLS]

Any information on when it would be made available to users? It looks like you are going to have a bunch of fixes we are interested in...

[Narcís]

Hi UserLS,

I guess it will be in the upcoming weeks. Hopefully before the end of June.