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Chart Data Format
Files which store data for charts are in plain text format. This means that they can be edited with any text editor such as Notepad.
In the following description, all text that is shown enclosed in quotation marks should be entered without them. For bar charts, the data is stored as follows:
- Any lines starting with a semicolon will be ignored, as will blank lines and white space at the start of lines.
- The first meaningful line should contain the text "calc = chart" (without the quotation marks).
- The remainder of the file is divided into blocks. The first block must always start with the text "Options:". This block specifies the title, subtitle, number of sets, the number of items in a set, the style (2D or 3D), the number of columsn in the legend and the thickness width of the legend's border.
- The last block, if it is used, is "Notes:". Any text from here to the end of the file will be treated as notes about the chart.
- The remaining blocks can be placed in any order.
- "Object:" blocks specify data for a title, subtitle, legend, chart, or the window itself.
- "Captions:" blocks give the labels, colour, and hatching specification for each bar in a set.
- "Data:" blocks give the caption for each set of bars and the value for each bar.
The texts for the title and subtitle can each be entered as two lines. In the data file, the line break in the text is indicated by the characters "\n" (without the quote marks).
The meaning of size and position data depends on the item to which it refers:
- The position of the window is the location on screen of its top left corner. The size data gives the width and height of the client area of the window.
- The position of the legend is the location of its top left corner inside the window's client area.
- The position of the title and subtitle is the horizontal mid point and top of the text.
In "Object:" blocks, the font is specified by it name followed by a comma and its size. The "Weight" value is an indication of how boldly the font is displayed.
Data for other kinds of chart is stored in a similar form, the main difference being the interpretation of the hatching data.