NetCharts Pro 4.6 Release Notes and New Features

NetCharts Pro 4.6 introduces a new chart type, support for running in headless mode, a number of new chart component controls and a variety of chart specific enhancements.

  • 4.6
    Support for Headless Unix environments
    NetCharts Pro 4.6 can run in Unix environments without access to an X Windows server. The JVM running NetCharts Pro must be run with JVM 1.4 or greater started with the -Djava.awt.headless=true flag.

    WBMP image encoder changes
    NetCharts Pro 4.6 uses a WBPM image encoder from Java Advanced Imaging Library.

    Polar Charts
    A Polar chart has been added to NetCharts in version 4.6. Polar charts specify points as an angle and a distance from the origin. See the Chart Gallery for Polar Chart examples.

    Bar Chart enhancements
    NetCharts Pro 4.6 supports stacked grouped bar charts. See the sample program GroupStackBar This release also allows control over the ordering of the items in the legend of stacked bar charts. See the API documentation for netcharts.pro.charts.bar.NFBarchart.setStackDisplayOrder() controls this behavior.

    Box Chart enhancements
    Boxchart supports a new PlotType called PERCENTN. PERCENTN. behaves like TENNINETY mode except the box uses a user specified number N and 100-N as its 2 percentile borders. See the API documentation for netcharts.pro.charts.box.NFBoxchart.setPercentileN()

    Dial Chart enhancements
    A new CDL parameter allows specification of Hand labels in Dial Charts. See the API documentation for netcharts.pro.charts.dial.NFDialHand.setHandLabel()

    Radar Chart enhancements
    Radar chart supports new axis controls. See the API documentation for netcharts.pro.charts.radar.NFRadialAxis.setColor(),netcharts.pro.charts.radar.NFRadialAxis.setScale() and netcharts.pro.charts.radar.NFRadialAxis.setTitleLabel().

    Text rendering enhancements
    New label parameters allow control over text ascent, descent and leading, and support text underscoring, overscoring and line-through. See the related API documentation for netcharts.pro.common.NFTextStyle.

    Data point symbol rendering enhancements
    NetCharts 4.6 introduces a new data point symbol called TARGET that draws a small circle within a larger circle. See netcharts.pro.common.lineset.NFLineSetSymbol.

    All Data Point symbols now allow control of symbol shadow width. The default width of the shadow is relative to the size of the symbol. Set the shadow width to 0 to produce flat two dimensional symbols. See netcharts.pro.common.lineset.NFLineSetSymbol.setShadowWidth()

    Individual data point color control
    Most chart types now allow control over the color of individual data points within a series. See the following API documentation netcharts.pro.common.barset.NFBarSet.setColorTable(), netcharts.pro.common.lineset.NFLineSet.setColorTable(),netcharts.pro.charts.stock.NFStockSet.setColorTable() and netcharts.pro.charts.time.NFTimeSet.setColorTable().

    Autoscaling axis enhancements
    NetCharts 4.6 introduces a new axis parameter called Autoscalepad that allows control over the minimum and maximum axis values NetCharts chooses when autoscaling an axis. This pad value adds margins to the axis range, so that the minimum and maximum points on an autoscaled axis are not drawn at the extreme edge of the plot area. See netcharts.pro.common.rectangular.NFDataChart.setAutoscalePad.

    Improved AntiAlias controls
    In NetCharts 4.6 text drawing and line drawing can have independent AntiAlias settings. It is possible to AntiAlias the drawing of just text, just lines or both text and lines. See the API documentation for netcharts.pro.common.NFGraph.setAntiAlias()

    Changes to Dwell Label precedence
    Dwell label precedence has changed. Dwell Labels are used to create the MAP tags that implement popup labels on chart images. The precedence of Dwell Labels now matches the order in which data points are drawn instead of the order in which they are specified in CDL parameters. Dwell Label precedence now also respects the DrawOrder parameter.

    Javascript Active Labels in IE6
    Internet Explorer 6.0 introduced new security polices involving javascript URLs. NetCharts 4.6 adds support for using javascript URLs in Active Labels in this new version of Internet Explorer.