Hi Leonard,
Let's give an example - a Venn diagram - this is constructed using
Asymptote:
size(5cm,0);
pen colour1=red;
pen colour2=green;
pair z0=(0,0); // COULD TAKE SOME VARIABLES FROM THE SPREADSHEET
pair z1=(-1,0);
pair z2=(1,0);
real r=1.5;
guide c1=circle(z1,r);
guide c2=circle(z2,r);
fill(c1,colour1);
fill(c2,colour2);
picture intersection=new picture;
fill(intersection,c1,colour1+colour2);
clip(intersection,c2);
add(intersection);
draw(c1);
draw(c2);
Well two circles that intersect is not that complicated. You have no
titles, no legend, no coordinate system, axes, grids here. Your data
consists of three values: center1, center2 and the radius. Of course,
you don't want to show bigger examples here, but this example does not
show the problems you have with script-generated objects that are later
modified by users.
Of course, scripting languages for charts are a good thing, but I see no
way to integrate this into OOo, except with a HUGE effort. Especially
all the kind of auto-layouts we have do not fit into the concept of
doing everything (any kind of draw primitives) in a script. Sorry, in my
opinion this kind of scripting language does not work with OOo chart.
Now what should the Chart module do:
- it should take this high level graphical commands and interpret them
using low level OOo objects/ UNO classes/ whatsoever.
- the graph should be stored in the file/document using xml that maps
directly to the low level commands
- if the user wants to customize the graph, build low level methods
(this is actually the case even now), do not change the script
- ... then the script wouldn't match what the final output is: while
true, this has no relevance, as the script is used only to create the
chart initially (as a wrapper for the complex low level commands) and
to allow for the greatest flexibility doing this
And this is simply not possible. If the script is only used for initial
creation, you can never allow a data update when the user has already
changed something. This is again the different approach we have: if
spreadsheet data changes, we re-render our chart to make the new data
visible, even if the user did changes in the meantime. To have this
behavior in a script is IMO a very difficult task.
-Bjoern
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