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Hidden Treasures in OpenOffice 2.0's Chart Tool

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the added-excitement-for-that-big-deadline dept.

Jane Walker writes "Take a tour of the multi-layered charting tools of OpenOffice 2.0's Charting Wizard, as you learn to create, edit and master the art of making a polished chart." From the article: "The chart features in OpenOffice are like a mystery-lover's dream vacation: a huge, mysterious old house with lots of long halls, secret bookcases, dark closets and creaky doors that, when you peer behind them, reveal wonderful secrets."

4 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. due for a rewrite by Harlan879 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Uh, ridiculous. The charting code works, barely, but it's full of weird bugs, interface wackiness, and major, huge, usefulness-preventing limitations. My understanding is that a from-scratch rewrite of the Chart code was on the table for 2.0, but they didn't have the resources to do it and it got delayed, probably until 3.0. I use Chart for quick-and-dirty graphs when exploring data, but for real production graphs I use Grace.

  2. unfortunately, they suck by Arthur+B. · · Score: 4, Interesting

    really... I work in finance where virtually everyone uses excel. Try plotting a 1000 points chart in OOo. It will take a very noticeable time and the default behavior will be to have an ugly "row" written under every point! In excel the graph appears instantaneously and looks neat. Actually excel is the only software I miss under linux (cxoffice rulez though)... many people mention photoshop, but the gap between OOo calc and excel is 1 order of magnitude more than between photoshop and the gimp. At least for my use. It's really too bad :( Kchart is also slow as hell by the way.... I wonder what;s specific with excel's implementation of charts...

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    1. Re:unfortunately, they suck by Tyler+Eaves · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Suggestion: Use gnumeric. It sucks considerably less. Not gonna say it's GOOD (but then I wouldn't say Excel is either) but it definatly sucks less.

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  3. Try this... by dskoll · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Try making a chart with more than a few hundred data points. Go eat supper while your computer grinds, churns and overheats.

    Then resize the chart. Eat, grind, churn, overheat.

    Head over to GNUPlot. Plots those hundreds of data points in under a second. Thank you.