Change History

NoteSets now have associated ActiveLabels. This provides users the power to associate a popup label or drill-down information with one or more text or graphic annotations, anywhere on the chart.

The Axis Staggering/Skipping feature can be used to either manually or automatically prevent axis label overlap. Users may choose one of seven modes to "skip" axis labels, "stagger" axis labels or use a combination of skipping and staggering to always insure readable labels.

If the text value of the DwellLabel parameter is set to "OUTLINE", then an outline will be automatically displayed for all active label targets when the mouse dwells over that target. This allows developers to specify outline locations without having to specify "OUTLINE" for each of the items in the ActiveLabels parameters.

In order to ease the specification of GIF file locations, a number of pre-defined variables are now recognized in all GIF image URLs. For example, if $CODEBASE is used, the chart will look in the CodeBase directory for the file, whereas if $DOCBASE is used, it will look in the DocumentBase directory.

Any GIF image can now be specified as a graph symbol in an XYChart, ComboChart, StockChart, StripChart or Line Chart using the LineSymbol parameter. This allows charts to display symbols of arbitrary shapes, sizes and colors.

If the text value of the DwellLabel parameter is set to "OUTLINE", then an outline will be automatically displayed for all active label targets when the mouse dwells over that target. This allows developers to specify outline locations without having to specify "OUTLINE" for each of the items in the ActiveLabels parameters.

The NodeLabel and NodeBox parameters have been added to the Diagram to allow the specification of unique properties for each node in the diagram. These parameters provide all of the features of any label and region, including the ability to use GIF images for the node or as part of the node background.

Additionally, the Diagram has been modified so that nodes cannot be dragged out of the current chart area. Previously, nodes could be dragged to an area in which they couldn't be retrieved.

The SlicePos and SliceBorder parameters have been added to allow the specification of a radial offset for one or more slices, and the line style for the border of all slices. This allows the display of conventional exploding piecharts, in which one or more of the slices are separated from the rest of the pie.

Individual pie slices can be positioned radially by dragging them with the right-mouse button held down and all pie slices can be moved in or out radially using the PAGEDOWN and PAGEUP keyboard keys.

The entire pie chart can now be rotated using the LEFT, RIGHT, UP and DOWN arrows keys, in addition to dragging the mouse around the piechart. The LEFT and UP keys cause the pie to rotate 5 degrees in the counter-clockwise direction, while the RIGHT and DOWN keys rotate it 5 degrees in the clockwise direction. If the SHIFT key is held down while pressing any of those keys, then an increment of 30 degrees is used.

The Columns attribute has been added to the LegendLayout parameter to specify the number of columns desired when displaying a legend. By default, the number of columns will be automatically determined in order to prevent, if possible, the legend from exceeding the height or width of the chart (for VERTICAL and HORIZONTAL legends respectively) or the max height or width specified by the LegendBoxSize parameter.

All format expressions have been enhancement to support the optional separating of whole numbers into groups (usually thousands). The default grouping is set to 3, using a comma as the group separator and a period as the decimal separator. The NumberFormat parameter can be used to change the separators and the grouping size. Java programmers can also use the NFUtil.setGrouping() and NFUtil.setDecSymbol() methods to control the types of separators used when formatting numbers.

NetCharts users may now specify a border color to be used when the region border type is set to "BOX".

The tops and sides of 3D bars are now active dwell locations, along with the front as in previous versions. This allows users to drill-down by selecting the top or side of the bar. The outline displayed for a bar when "OUTLINE" has been specified for the ActiveLabel has also been changed to include the top and side of a 3D bar.

The CENTER image format has been added to all Region parameters, along with the existing TILE and SIZE formats, to specify that the background image should be centered in the given region, rather than being tiled or sized to fit.

The display rendering for all labels and titles has been changed so that any GIF image can be used as either the background for a label or as the label itself. This allows all charts to make use of images for custom labels and titles.

Label rendering is now accomplished in the following steps, where any or all of the steps are optional, depending on the specification of the label and underlying region.

	1) draw shadow
	2) fill region color
	3) draw image
	4) draw label
	5) draw border

The LineSymbol parameter has been added to all charts that display line sets, allowing for the easy specification of the line symbol for each line set. This reduces the need to specify the line symbol attributes when a line set is specified and allows the attributes to be changed dynamically, without having to re-specify all other line set attributes.

This modification also allows symbols to be filled, outlined or both, with full specification of the border color and width. Additionally, GIF images can be specified as symbols in all charts that display line sets.

The LineStyle parameter has been added to all charts that display line sets, allowing for the easy specification of the line style for each line set. This reduces the need to specify the line style attributes when a line set is specified and allows the attributes to be changed dynamically, without having to re-specify all other line set attributes.

The display processing of rotated labels has been improved whenever a label is displayed more than once. That is, the time to display the label the first time has not changed, but all subsequent displays will be much faster. This improves the performance of any chart that contains one or more rotated labels and is being updated dynamically, without changing the label display properties.

Java programmers can now control the types of actions performed for zoom and dwell mouse events, through the following instance variables in the NFGraph class:

The parsing of Parameter Server connections has been enhanced to display a status message whenever a parsing error occurs in the input stream. This aids developers in determining when a server bug exists. After displaying the status message, the parser will flush the input stream to the next semi-colon and attempt to continue processing.

A status message is also displayed if the server connection is broken prematurely, notifying the user of the broken connection. To properly close down a connection without displaying such a message, the Parameter Server should send the following command in the input stream:

	CLOSE;

Parameter Servers may display arbitrary messages to the user at any time by using the STATUS command in the input stream, as follows:

	STATUS "This is a status message";

A problem was fixed in the way that DATE formatted tic steps computed a jump of 1 month when Daylight Savings Time was in effect, resulting in some months that were repeated or skipped when displaying only month formats along an axis. Now, if a step of "1M" is specified, the month values will increment by exactly 1 month, regardless of Daylight Savings Time issues.

A multi-threaded problem was exhibited sometimes when multiple chart applets were displayed in the same document and two or more of the charts used rotated labels. Such a problem usually resulted in the display of a red box around some of the rotated labels and/or no label being displayed at all.

When running under Netscape4.x, if a parameter file contained international font values and was referenced via the NFParamURL parameter, FILE keyword or as an active label LOADPARAMS target, then the fonts were improperly displayed because Netscape's JVM doesn't have the default font encoding set properly.

In order to eliminate this problem, the NFFontEncoding applet parameter and the FontEncoding script parameter have been added to allow users to specify the font encoding to be used when processing a parameter file.

When running under IE4.x, an error is generated if a JavaScript attempts to invoke the loadParams() method, because the loadParams() is overloaded and JavaScript doesn't properly determine the appropriate version to use.

Therefore, the loadParamsJS() method has been created to allow JavaScripts to send parameters to any chart applet. Since loadParamsJS() is not overloaded, IE4.x can invoke it properly.