Steema Central

• When I set InflateMargine to true on a pointer (line, area or just points series) and my axes are automatic it works fine. But if I want my vertical axis to have specific Min/Max values (say 0 through 20) they will be inflated! Why? I am setting the range with a reason and pointers will fit inside (and when I set Min/Max values you do not enforce all points to fall into the range, so why you change them for the pointers?) This will break all the existing graphs all our customers have created and there is no work around either! I cannot tell my customers to open each graph they have (they may have dozens) and start playing with numbers to get the range right.
• This is similar to the previous one, but now we have series marks visible. Again, if my vertical axis is automatic, it is great that you make sure that all the marks will fall into the graph area (unfortunately you have forgotten that arrow length can be negative and therefore it works only with positive arrow length). But when I set up Min/Max range on an axis, inflating the range is unacceptable.
• Shadow -> Smooth is totally broken for every object that can have a shadow, but the real piece of art is smooth shadow (make offsets big enough to see it) on a Donut series!
• With this version I cannot get Back Wall to draw at all! I am not sure if I am doing anything wrong or it is just broken but I did not find a way to get it visible using both your chart editor and simple property editor. -- After playing with it a little more I found that if Size3D is set to 0, than I have my back wall showing up unless I select one of the two broken themes (Blues and Grayscale).

When I set InflateMargine to true on a pointer (line, area or just points series) and my axes are automatic it works fine. But if I want my vertical axis to have specific Min/Max values (say 0 through 20) they will be inflated! Why? I am setting the range with a reason and pointers will fit inside (and when I set Min/Max values you do not enforce all points to fall into the range, so why you change them for the pointers?) This will break all the existing graphs all our customers have created and there is no work around either! I cannot tell my customers to open each graph they have (they may have dozens) and start playing with numbers to get the range right.

      tChart1.Aspect.View3D = false;

      Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Points points1 = new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Points(tChart1.Chart);
      points1.Pointer.InflateMargins = false;
      points1.Add(0, 0);
      points1.Add(1, 10);
      points1.Add(2, 20);

      tChart1.Axes.Left.SetMinMax(0, 20);
      
      tChart1.Axes.Bottom.MinimumOffset = 5;
      tChart1.Axes.Bottom.MaximumOffset = 5;

      for (int i = 0; i < tChart1.Axes.Count; i++)
      {
        Steema.TeeChart.Axis a = tChart1.Axes[i];
        if (a.Automatic)
        {
          int offset = (a.Horizontal) ? points1.Pointer.HorizSize : points1.Pointer.VertSize;
          a.MinimumOffset = offset;
          a.MaximumOffset = offset;
        }
      }

This is similar to the previous one, but now we have series marks visible. Again, if my vertical axis is automatic, it is great that you make sure that all the marks will fall into the graph area (unfortunately you have forgotten that arrow length can be negative and therefore it works only with positive arrow length). But when I set up Min/Max range on an axis, inflating the range is unacceptable.

      tChart1.Aspect.View3D = false;

      Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Points points1 = new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Points(tChart1.Chart);
      points1.Pointer.InflateMargins = false;
      points1.Marks.Visible = true;
      points1.Marks.ArrowLength = 10;
      points1.Add(0, 0);
      points1.Add(1, 10);
      points1.Add(2, 20);

      tChart1.Axes.Left.SetMinMax(0, 20);

Shadow -> Smooth is totally broken for every object that can have a shadow

but the real piece of art is smooth shadow (make offsets big enough to see it) on a Donut series!

      Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Donut donut1 = new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Donut(tChart1.Chart);
      donut1.FillSampleValues();
      donut1.Shadow.Visible = true;
      donut1.Shadow.Smooth = true;

With this version I cannot get Back Wall to draw at all! I am not sure if I am doing anything wrong or it is just broken but I did not find a way to get it visible using both your chart editor and simple property editor. -- After playing with it a little more I found that if Size3D is set to 0, than I have my back wall showing up unless I select one of the two broken themes (Blues and Grayscale).

    public Form1()
    {
      InitializeComponent();
      InitializeChart();
    }

    private void InitializeChart()
    {
      tChart1.Clear();
      tChart1.Series.Add(new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar()).FillSampleValues();

      tChart1.Walls.Back.Gradient.Visible = false;
      tChart1.Walls.Back.Color = Color.Red;
    }

    private void InitializeChart()
    {
      tChart1.Clear();
      tChart1.Series.Add(new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar()).FillSampleValues();

      Steema.TeeChart.Themes.BlueSkyTheme bluesTheme = new Steema.TeeChart.Themes.BlueSkyTheme(tChart1.Chart);
      bluesTheme.Apply();

      tChart1.Walls.Back.Transparent = false;
      tChart1.Walls.Back.Size = 0;
    }

    private void InitializeChart()
    {
      tChart1.Clear();
      tChart1.Series.Add(new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar()).FillSampleValues();

      Steema.TeeChart.Themes.GrayscaleTheme grayTheme = new Steema.TeeChart.Themes.GrayscaleTheme(tChart1.Chart);
      grayTheme.Apply();

      tChart1.Walls.Back.Color = Color.Red;
      tChart1.Walls.Back.Size = 0;
    }

For the problem with marks run the following code:

Although I understand that you are trying to explain the behavior and find a work around for it, but calling it "not a bug" when you do not respect my (your user's) selection is plain wrong. Unfortunately none of your work arounds will work for us since I do not have control over my users' graphs and they will not accept this type of behavior. And as I already have said, I cannot ask them to open every graph they have already created and start adjusting different properties just to get around the bug. And yes, if I set axis.minimum to a value and axis has different minimum at the end - this is a huge bug, like it or not. I do not want to sound mean, but I want you to understand, that we are dealing with thousands of users and each of them has created dozens of different graphs, included them into reports. I cannot even try to assume what they are trying to do in each graph and adjust something for them (like you've suggested). Plain and simple: if they type "20" as axis maximum - that is what they expect to be the maximum on the graph. And a single report can include several different graphs (some with marks, some with pointers) and all the graphs need to show same value range. Can you imagine a pain of adjusting just one such report? And in most cases all those graphs/reports are already created and now the user just prints them when needed without opening them first. I really need it to be fixed. One of the requirements I have, is that when we are upgrading to the new release of TChart, the images produced by already created graphs do not change unless there is a good reason for the change (a bug was fixed). And I have to explain every such change.

      tChart1.Aspect.View3D = false;

      Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Points points1 = new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Points(tChart1.Chart);
      points1.Pointer.InflateMargins = false;
      points1.Add(0, 0);
      points1.Add(1, 10);
      points1.Add(2, 20);

      tChart1.Axes.Left.SetMinMax(0, 20);
      tChart1.Aspect.ClipPoints = false;

Now, for the walls, try this code:
Here, if I set Size to 0 I see the wall, anything else - no wall...

The version which is in our official release is from Feb 18, 2010 and marks and pointers do not affect axis margins when they were set by a user. We did try to upgrade to a version that was released in June or August of the same year but both releases had too many problems and we could not include them into our app, but I do not believe I have seen marks or pointers affect axis min/max values before this release. And as for the testing - I do run automated tests against your graphs package (total about 15000 images compared with previous version, and it takes about 35 minutes) - so it is possible to do it at least for most used options or the ones that are broken most often and, for sure, for all new features.

This is not new, but I'd like to bring this issue again (I think I did in the past, but nothing has changed). When you have Header and Subheader on a graph and both of them have shadows, then if shadow offsets are negative the actual positioning of objects is not changed and if offsets are big enough, the shadow will be behind other objects (which I consider the correct behavior). But if shadow offsets are positive, than Subheader is moved down to allow space not only for the Header, but for its shadow as well, the graph area is moved down to allow room for Subheader and its shadow. This is really strange. And it is true for the other objects like Legend (except Legend's shadow behaves the same way for both positive and negative offsets.) It looks even more awkward on Footer/Subfooter with shadows.

One more question. With this release, when I set Wall.Brush.Visible = false it does not stay and reverts back to true. Is it intentional or yet, another bug?

1. Series marks, when rotated do not show round rectangle.
2. Series marks - Arrow Head:
   • None works fine
   • Line: whatever you intended to do - it is not working ever. Instead it draws some lines and looks awful.
   • Solid:
     • Pie charts: When arrow length is positive it works fine. If arrow length is negative, first the pie is inflated for some reason and marks are not at the tip of the arrow.
     • Vertical series (bars, areas, lines, etc): if arrow points up - it works fine, if arrow points down its head is covered by the mark.
     • Horizontal series (bars, areas, lines, etc): When positive arrow length - if arrow points right - it works fine, if arrow points left its head is covered by the mark. When negative arrow length - it is all wrong.
3. When changing series type some properties that do not apply to the new type are not cleared/set (old style is bar, color each is false -> changing to pie, color each is still false), but marks, that apply to every series type are reverted to the default settings.
4. Images. In the version that we're using, when image is assigned to rotated mark or side walls it is rotated to make it parallel with the surface it is placed on... Not anymore. When stretched in some cases it will not cover the whole area because if this.

Series marks, when rotated do not show round rectangle.

Series marks- Arrow Head: ...
Line: whatever you intended to do - it is not working ever. Instead it draws some lines and looks awful.

 private void InitializeChart()
        {
            tChart1.Aspect.View3D = false;
            Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar Series1 = new Steema.TeeChart.Styles.Bar(tChart1.Chart);
            Series1.FillSampleValues();
            Series1.ColorEach = false;
            Series1.Marks.Arrow.Color = Color.Black;
            Series1.Marks.Callout.ArrowHead = ArrowHeadStyles.Line;
        }

Series marks- Arrow Head: ...
Solid: Pie charts: When arrow length is positive it works fine. If arrow length is negative, first the pie is inflated for some reason and marks are not at the tip of the arrow.

Series marks- Arrow Head: ...
Vertical series (bars, areas, lines, etc): if arrow points up - it works fine, if arrow points down its head is covered by the mark.
Horizontal series (bars, areas, lines, etc): When positive arrow length - if arrow points right - it works fine, if arrow points left its head is covered by the mark. When negative arrow length - it is all wrong.

When changing series type some properties that do not apply to the new type are not cleared/set (old style is bar, color each is false -> changing to pie, color each is still false), but marks, that apply to every series type are reverted to the default settings.

Images. In the version that we're using, when image is assigned to rotated mark or side walls it is rotated to make it parallel with the surface it is placed on... Not anymore. When stretched in some cases it will not cover the whole area because if this.

• If I have a line graph and all axes are automatic and Marks.Visible = true, than first and last marks are not shown. Yes, I can set offsets to something other than 0 and the marks will show up, but then other stuff stops working (like inflate margins if I am showing pointers).
• Chart.CalcClickedPart is broken for at least Pie and Donut series. For the past 12 years when I was moving mouse over them I'd get PointIndex set to the correct value (and we rely on this behavior a lot in our system)... not anymore. It is either -1 when mouse is outside of the series and 0 when it is pointing to the Pie/Donut. It works OK with lines, bars, ans areas.

If I have a line graph and all axes are automatic and Marks.Visible = true, than first and last marks are not shown. Yes, I can set offsets to something other than 0 and the marks will show up, but then other stuff stops working (like inflate margins if I am showing pointers).

Chart.CalcClickedPart is broken for at least Pie and Donut series. For the past 12 years when I was moving mouse over them I'd get PointIndex set to the correct value (and we rely on this behavior a lot in our system)... not anymore. It is either -1 when mouse is outside of the series and 0 when it is pointing to the Pie/Donut. It works OK with lines, bars, ans areas.