Interactive Chart Program

[Filip Sawicki LAKE]

  I have written a simple interactive chart program called Fchart.
Here is a brief description of its features. This posting is followed
by installation notes (read before you do anything!) and 4 shar files
(smaller than 70KB each) in the alt.sources.

  Program is based upon Gnuplot code, and uses a similar language for
the user interface.  Four parts come directly from Gnuplot: help
facility, input scanner, doc maker and terminal drivers. Maybe, if
well tested and approved, program will be a part of Gnuplot in the
future.

  Code can be freely redistributed if found useful, as long as the
copyright messages are retained. PLEASE DO NOT REDISTRIBUTE MODIFIED
CODE, rather e-mail me your suggestions.

  Gnuplot Copyright (C) 1986, 1987, 1990 Thomas Williams, Colin Kelley
          John Campbell, David Kotz, Russell Lang

  Fchart Copyright (C) 1990 Piotr Filip Sawicki

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  Fchart features:

  * Interactive user interface, batch files accepted, on-line help
  * Highly customizable output form (size, position, form, labels)
  * Four main chart styles :
    - normal side-by-side (adjacent) bars
    - stacked bars
    - layer-over-layer bars
    - pies
  * Many adjustable variations of styles:
    - pie charts with slices exploding in any direction, combining
      slices below specified threshold, drawing clockwise or counter-
      clockwise
    - bar charts with any value for base, drawn in any order with any
      gravity (left, right, top, bottom of page)
    - and lots more
  * Drawing down or across several data files (i.e. standard or
    transposed data)
  * Accepted input:
    - Gnuplot files
    - private format
    - columnar data files
  * Missing values supported
  * Partial input (from spec. row to spec. row); in any case, file is 
    read at once
  * Internal vector font (Roman type) for better labeling and for
    terminals that cannot rotate text (courtesy Joe Felsenstein,
    joe at genetics.washington.edu)
  * Smart autolabeling, arrows, lines, labels (drawn in any size and/or 
    direction).
  * Wide range of supported terminals (well, that's a Gnuplot feature)

  Faults, caveats, bugs:

  * Gnuplot bugs
  * Only 2D graphics by now (3D bars later ... perhaps)
  * Some errors in bar centering (almost unvisible)
  * Not very smart tick marking algorithm
  * Makefile only for *NIX systems (if some poor soul is going to
    write that for VMS or MS-DOS, please send it to me), though due to
    #ifdefs program should work everywhere.

  Future (in one month?):

  * New, highly independent and expandable graphics kernel
  * More fonts
  * Bar filling algorithm
  * Gnuplot patch 01 update
  * Anything you request

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fi.
(Piotr Filip Sawicki	fs at uwasa.fi)