Hi there,

I am trying to produce this sort of visualization for timetable data 
(attached).


It is a format that has been used for about two hundred years to plan 
timetables in railway systems worldwide, but strangely doesn't appear 
anywhere online except in some legacy W*s applications. 


The question is what is the right approach to getting Sheets to do this. 
 There are several features that make it more than a plain line graph. 


   1. The data has column 1 as a set of names of places, each of which will 
   become a discrete horizontal line in the graph
   2. Each column represents information about the path of a single train.
   3. The data has a comment field as row 1 (usually information about the 
   train's source or destination) 
   4. Row 2 is train type information, a set of characteristics - this will 
   determine the format of the line used (color or pattern)
   5. From Col 2 and Row 3 onward, there are time of day values 
   corresponding to the trains journey (note: two rows are used for the times 
   of arrival at and departure from important stations)

So, just using a line graph doesn't work because although there is a line 
per train, the type of line and the legend are related to type and not to 
just one range (row 2).

Note also the y-axis is repeated at the top and the bottom of the graph 
(actually many larger examples had the x axis repeated on the right as 
well).

All this leads me to think this needs a new chart type. That's where things 
get confusing. I see all the ability to create a new chart-type is 
apparently there - but it is entirely unclear (to me) what is allowed for 
writing the UI components to be compliant. 

D3 is a powerful SVG wrangler that could certainly be swizzled to produce 
this result, but I see references to D3 only being allowed in iframe 
sandboxes like a sidebar (which this isn't trying to be -> it wants to be a 
chart that could be submitted for use with Sheets proper). 

The GWT Google-web-apis javascript that this site 
<https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/dev/> refers to in 
"Top Tips" under "How to Create a New Chart Type" is apparently status 
"Inactive" - no longer being maintained as of Sept 11th.  But GWT has 
Polymer and there is Canvas, and so on, some of which seem to be in beta 
status or only have been updated a long time ago.   

Given the official advice is now outdated - And before I spend time making 
a chart that depends on the wrong base >-( - what is the accepted "correct" 
base for UI components for a new chart type now if there is an ambition to 
offer the result to the community rather than have a lot of setup by the 
end user or have to maintain a separate web site? 

Thanks,
Adam


<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-g8TamWxUEnE/Vk9Ve2xtqvI/AAAAAAAAqJc/CLb1taonzkI/s1600/timetable-graph-format.jpg>
 
<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-g8TamWxUEnE/Vk9Ve2xtqvI/AAAAAAAAqJc/CLb1taonzkI/s1600/timetable-graph-format.jpg>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Google Visualization API" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-visualization-api.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-visualization-api/3eb51019-0643-49e9-97f2-12a53de2fadc%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Reply via email to