Chart Object Introduction

Overview

Introduction

ChartObject is a powerful object-oriented library of 2D and 3D interactive graphic tools that enables X Windows/Motif developers and end users alike to create a wide range of charts. ChartObject goes beyond widget technology to give users a level of interactive real-time performance, flexibility and editing functionality unavailable in any other charting package.

ChartObject is based on the Model-View-Controller architecture (MVC) first used in Smalltalk. This design allows both application developers and users to construct multiple views of the same data easily. For example, a set of data may be viewed simultaneously as tabular rows and columns using our EditTable widget, and (using our Chart widget), a bar chart or a 3D surface chart.

Figure 1: Multiple Views of a Data Object.

The ChartObject library includes:

• EditObject, which is a widget class that is the container widget handling the display and editing of graphic objects. It implements the controller component of the MVC architecture. See Reference pages for a complete description of the resources, callbacks and public functions defined by the EditObject class.
• DataObject, which consists of a library of data objects that contain a representation of the application's data. It implements the model component of the MVC architecture. See Reference pages for a complete description of the objects contained in DataObject.
• GraphicObject, which consists of a library of low level graphic objects that serves as the foundation of ChartObject. See Reference pages for a complete description of the objects defined in GraphicObject.
• ChartObject, which consists of a library of high-level graphic objects, designed for charting, that implements the view component of the MVC architecture. See Reference pages for a complete description of the objects defined in ChartObject.