Steema Central

• if I set my graph to NOT SHOW ANY BORDERS, then you guys are adding a black border around my graph anyway. Is there any way to produce an image file with chart and without border?
• if I set my chart with transparent background (or try to use shadow for the whole graph), in resulting image areas, that supposed to be transparent, are black!
• if I set my chart.Panel.Shadow.Visible = true and save it as image - the shadow is there (yes, the transparent parts are black, but this is not the point here). Now, if I set chart.Panel.Shadow.Smooth = true, save this graph into an image file - the whole shadow is gone now!

I wish it was true about metafile - this is our preferred format, but... try, for example, to set grid lines as following:
Width = 1
Style = DashStyle.Dot
EndCap = Linecap.Round
DashCap = DashCap.Roound
Now, save this chart into metafile and explain why grid lines are not straight (to see it clearly you may need to zoom in a little)?

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
           tChart1.Export.Image.Metafile.EMFFormat = System.Drawing.Imaging.EmfType.EmfPlusOnly;
           tChart1.Export.Image.Metafile.Save("c:\\teeChart1.emf"); 

         }

Smooth shadows are not coming through at all, while other options (like edge styles on pie) are not drawn properly. Header seems to be drawn twice, and if I zoom in/out it turns out that two versions of header text have different widths.

I can continue this list, but the point is: this format is not ready for its prime time.

Besides, you have another issue with metafiles: its size. The file created is huge, especially if I am using EmfPlusOnly or EmfPlusDual options. We tried to include it into our report and then send report to printer - it takes 5 - 10 minutes, before the printer starts printing! With PNG format the delay is not noticeable at all.

As to other image formats, setting bevel as you have shown in other post, does not work for us (the other properties you've changed there I cannot touch - they are controlled by my users and I am not supposed to change them. Bevel we never use and it always stays set to None.). But good news - I think setting UseBuffer to false does take care of transparent issue. One question though: IDE hints me that this property is marked as obsolete, but it did not tell me what I am supposed to use instead.

     tChart1.Graphics3D.BufferStyle = Steema.TeeChart.Drawing.BufferStyle.None;

     tChart1.Graphics3D.BufferStyle = Steema.TeeChart.Drawing.BufferStyle.OptimizedBuffer;

If do you think there are more issues in this area, we would like to know about them. Identifying existing problems will help us enhancing current functionality.

Besides, you have another issue with metafiles: its size. ...

I couldn't reproduce your problem using last version of TeeChart .Net. Please, could you send us a simple example or explain exactly which steps we can follow for reproduce the problem here?
Also, could you say us what is your version of TeeChart .Net?

I am not sure what is it exactly you could not reproduce... I am using the latest released version of TChart 2010. Go to Chart Editor, create a simple bar graph, fill it with a few random values. Now go to the Export page and save you chart as .PNG format (in my case, file size is 37KB). Saving the same chart as metafile produces files with sizes from 1,432KB to 3,883BK depending on EMF type - which in worst case was about 105 times bigger than .PNG! Doing the same test with more sophisticated pie chart resulted in .PNG file of 58KB and metafiles 7,869KB (for EmfOnly) and 20,246KB (for EmfPlusOnly) - which is about 350 times bigger than .PNG! Including these monsters inside our reports (which are complicated enough as they are) is a very bad idea!

 public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            InitializeChart();
        }
        private void InitializeChart()
        {
            tChart1.Clear();
            tChart1.Width = 800;
            tChart1.Height = 600;

            Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar bar1 = new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar(tChart1.Chart);
            bar1.FillSampleValues();

            tChart1.Export.Image.PNG.Save("c:\\teeChart1.png");

            tChart1.Export.Image.Metafile.EMFFormat = System.Drawing.Imaging.EmfType.EmfOnly;
            tChart1.Export.Image.Metafile.Save("c:\\teeChartEmfOnly.emf");

            tChart1.Export.Image.Metafile.EMFFormat = System.Drawing.Imaging.EmfType.EmfPlusDual;
            tChart1.Export.Image.Metafile.Save("c:\\teeChartEmfPlusDual.emf");

            tChart1.Export.Image.Metafile.EMFFormat = System.Drawing.Imaging.EmfType.EmfPlusOnly;
            tChart1.Export.Image.Metafile.Save("c:\\teeChartEmfPlusOnly.emf"); 
        }

This problem is very critical for us. We transitioned from Delphi (where metafiles worked just fine) to .NET this year. Now my users are stuck with either .PNG, .JPEG or other similar firmats, that do not produce required quality and have problems, like with the border, that have no work around for them. And you know about it for about 18 months and choose not to fix it asap (so there is no hope, you will ever fix it). From other side there are metafiles, with tons of bugs, huge sizes which makes them even less usable... So, the question is: how can we save a chart into our reports (if I cannot do this simple task - why bother at all setting it up?)