NetCharts Pro 4.5 Release Notes and New Features

NetCharts Pro 4.5 introduces a number of new chart layout controls, improvements to chart event handling, and a variety of chart specific enhancements.

  • 4.5
    New Chart Layout Features
    NetCharts 4.5 introduces new controls to specify and fix the plot area of a chart. This in turn provides control over the space allocated for the titles and legends that surround the plot area. Developers can now create charts that have the same sized plot area regardless of the size of the titles, axis labels or legend labels.

    This feature was implemented with the addition of three new CDL parameters, PlotArea, AxesSizes and ChartElementSpacing. See the CDL Reference for a description of the parameters and the API documentation for details on NFGraph.setPlotArea, NFGraph.setChartElementSpacing and NFDataChart.setAxesSizes

    Axis Margin Controls
    New axis parameters allow the specification of margins on axes and prevent axis labels and data points from being clipped at the edges of a chart. See the CDL Reference manual for details on the new parameters BottomMargins, TopMargins, LeftMargins and RightMargins. and the API documentation for the class NFAxisMargin

    Label justification enhancements
    All NetCharts labels now accept an interior alignment attribute. Interior Alignment specifies the alignment (LEFT, RIGHT or CENTER) to use in text strings that contain multiple lines. All title parameters accept an interior and also an exterior alignment attribute. Exterior Alignment specifies the alignment for the entire Title object within its space on a chart. See the updated API documentation for NFLabel and NFTitle

    Maps and Polygon chart Support
    The diagram chart now supports the creation of maps and other image based charts. See the new map examples in the Diagram section of the chart gallery. See the CDL Reference manual for details on the new parameters PolyColor and PolySet and the API documentation for related new classes and methods in netcharts.pro.charts.diagram

    Box Charts Upgrades
    NetCharts 4.5 includes improved support for Boxcharts. New statistical modes include EDA, Guassian and 10-90. Box charts now support vertical orientation, box fence controls, multiple limit sets, raw data display and mean lines. See the Chart Gallery for new Boxchart examples in the chart gallery. See the CDL Reference manual for details on many new Boxchart related CDL parameters. See the API documentation for new methods on netcharts.pro.charts.box.NFBoxchart

    ActiveLabel control enhancements
    A new CDL parameter improves control over Active Label display. ActiveLabelsEnabled will turn off the display of active labels on data sets while keeping other active labels on titles and legends active.

    Timechart task height
    Timecharts now allow specification of the height of a task bar. The new CDL parameter TaskHeight controls this behavior. See the CDL Reference for details. Also see the API documentation for NFTimeChart.setTaskHeight.

    Note Shape Fills
    This new feature allows note shapes (rectangles and ellipses) to have a fill color. New attributes to NoteArrow and NoteBox define this behavior. See the CDL Reference for details. Also see the new API documentation for NFNoteSet.

    Note Drag
    This new feature allows NoteSets to be individually configured to allow, or disallow dragging. The new CDL parameter NoteDrag controls this behavior. See the updated API documentation for NFNoteSet.

    Improved Page Creation methods
    The NFServletUtil class, which provides convenience methods for creating HTML pages containing chart elements, has been improved. A series of getImgSrcTag() methods have been added. A defaultHREF attribute has been added to getDrillDownPage() which simplifies the process of creating default javascript based chart drilldown.

    Improved event handling
    NetCharts Pro chart event handling has been enhanced to include drag, zoom, scroll and redraw events. See the updated simpleeventexample example in the examples section of the distribution and the updated API documentation for the package netcharts.pro.event