TAChart documentation
│
English (en) │
русский (ru) │
українська (uk) │
中文(中国大陆) (zh_CN) │
Overview
TAChart is a package for drawing graphs, charts and other diagrams. It is comparable in features, but not specifically compatible, with Delphi TeeChart package. One substantial difference is that some features (e.g. data sources and axis transformations) are implemented via separate components instead of just properties. This leads to increased flexibility and opportunity for code re-use, but at the cost of some additional API complexity.
Series
Series are the central part of TAChart. Most of the series represent data taken from data sources in graphical ways, such as lines or bars.
Constant line series
This is the simplest series type, representing "infinite" vertical or horizontal line. It can be used as "central axis" in function graphs or as a draggable marker.
Also, by setting Active
=true, Pen.Style=psClear
and
UseBounds=true
and appropriate AxisIndexX
, it becomes "axis extender",
making sure that given Position
will always by included in the axis range.
Basic series
Basic series are mos often used, and include line, bar and area series. All basic series can be "stacked" by using multi-valued source. Also, all basic series fully support rotation and 3-D drawing.
Line series
TLineSeries
can be used to draw give set of points,
optionally marking them with shapes and connecting with lines.
You can get "stepped" look by setting LineType
property to ltStepXY
or ltStepYX
.
Fast lines
Some charting packages include special "fast line" series to quickly draw line series from extremely large datasets (10000+ points). Instead, TAChart contains optimized fast path inside standard line series code, achieving comparable drawing speed. Line series will draw very fast if all of the following are true:
- There is no marks.
- There is no pointers.
LineType
is notltFromOrigin
.
Some operating systems/widgetsets may additionally require that
LinePen.Style=psSolid
and LinePen.Width=1
.
Additional speedups will be available if Source.Sorted=true
.
You can measure line speed drawing on your platform with the "line" demo.
Bar series
TBarSeries
represents data as a set or bars, extending from ZeroLevel
to data points.
You can control bar width with BarWidthPercent
property. Note that the it is measured relative to the
neighboring bars. If the X values are not equidistant, bars will have varying width.
To prevent that, set BarWidthStyle=bwPercentMin
.
You can draw multiple bar series side-by-side by using BarOffsetPercent
property.
Area series
TAreaSeries
represents data as a polygon extending from the data points to either ZeroLevel
line
or infinitely down (if UseZeroLevel=false
).
You can get "stepped" look by setting ConnectType
property.
Multi-value series
Multi-value series require multi-valued data source, and use additional Y values as extra parameters to draw complex shapes.
Bubble series
TBubbleSeries
represent data as a circles of variable radius centered at data points.
This series require source with YCount
of at least 2,
and use first additional Y value as radius.
Box-and-whiskers series
TBoxAndWhiskerSeries
represents data as rectangles with a medium line and
two T-like shape protruding in both directions.
Although in statistics box-and whiskers plot is supposed to be based in specific
data quartiles, TAChart does not enforce this, allowing user to draw arbitrary plots.
With some effort, box-and whiskers series may be used to represent other charts different in meaning, but similar in appearance, such as Gantt diagram or Candlestick chart.
This series require source with YCount
of at least 5, and use Y values as follows:
Index | Usage |
---|---|
0 | Lower whisker |
1 | Lower box bound |
2 | Medium line |
3 | Upper box bound |
4 | Upper whisker |
Open-high-low-close series
TOpenHighLowCloseSeries
represent data as a vertical lines with two ticks,
as described here.
It usually requires YCount
of at least 4, and use Y values as follows:
Property | Default | Usage |
---|---|---|
YIndexLow | 0 | Lower point of line |
YIndexOpen | 1 | Left-facing tick position |
YIndexClose | 2 | Right-facing tick position |
YIndexHigh | 3 | Upper point of line |
Note that although Y values are supposed to be ordered ascending along the table above, the series does not enforce this and will draw any supplied data.
Radial series
Radial series ignore axis transformations. You can see examples of radial series in "radial" demo.
Pie series
TPieSeries
draws pie charts.
For each data point, pie series interprets Y value as a relative size of the slice,
and X value as a distance of splice from the center of the pie (only if Exploded
property is true).
Slice colors can be set in data items, or taken from the hard-coded list.
Pie radius can be either set manually by FixedRadius
property,
or calculated automatically so that the whole series, including all labels, exactly fits the parent chart.
There are several options for label positioning, controlled by MarkPositions
property:
pmpAround
-- marks are drawn outside the pie, on the continuation or radius vector for each slicepmpInside
-- marks are drawn inside each slicepmpLeftRight
-- marks are drawn directly to the left or to the right of slice
If RotateLabels
is true, each label is additionally rotated so that
(if LabelFont.Orientation=0
) it is parallel to the radius vector of its slice.
Polar series
TPolarSeries
represent data as points in polar coordinates.
The origin of the polar coordinate system is defined in graph coordinates by OriginX
and OriginY
properties.
For each data point, X value is interpreted as an angle in radians and Y value -- as a distance from the center.
User-drawn series
Provides OnDraw
and OnGetBounds
events to allow arbitrary custom drawing on the TChart.
Note that using TChart.Canvas
directly is highly discouraged an will often not as expected.
Functional series
Functional series are recommended way to draw functional plots as opposed to, for example, pre-calculating function data and using line series. They provide scale-independent controls of smoothness vs drawing speed.
You can see examples of functional series in "func" demo.
Function series
TFuncSeries
represents a one-dimensional function defined by OnCalculate
event as a line.
The function is calculated for each Step
pixels of the image, so you can
use this property to increase "smoothness" or drawing speed.
DomainExclusions
property allows to exclude some intervals from the function domain.
Function series correctly draws discontinuity points set by DomainExclusions
.
Currently, DomainExclusions
can only be set at run-time.
B-spline series
TBSplineSeries
draws B-spline of given Dergee
using De Boor's algorithm.
Spline segments shorter then Step
pixels are represented by straight lines.
Cubic spline series
TCubicSplineSeries
draws cubic spline using standard
Numlib package from the FPC.
The spline function is calculated for each Step
pixels of the image, so you can
use this property to increase "smoothness" or drawing speed.
Data source must contain at least 4 points and have strictly increasing X coordinate.
If there are too few points, and csoDrawFewPoints
option is set,
line will be drawn instead of spline using BadDataPen
.
If X values are unordered and csoDrawUnorderedX
option is set,
spline will be drawn ignoring offending points using BadDataPen
.
csoExtrapolateLeft
and csoExtrapolateRight
options enable natural
extrapolation to the left and to the right correspondingly.
Color map series
TColorMapSeries
represent 2-dimensional function defined by OnCalculate
event
as a field of pixels, with color depending on function value.
The field is drawn as a set of rectangles of size StepX
by StepY
pixels.
The function is called once for each rectangle.
Color values are defined by ColorSource
, which must be sorted.
For each data point is interpreted as having X value correspond to Color value.
If the actual value falls between color levels, it can be either linearly interpolated
(if Interpolate=true
) or rounded down to the nearest level.
When Legend.Multiplicity=lmPoint
, color map series will display
color levels in the legend.
Sources
Data can get into a chart from various sources.
They are implemented as a set of components derived from TCustomChartSource
.
To assign a source to a series, you can set the Source
property.
If the property is left unassigned, the series will use its own built-in list source.
Methods like AddXY
are delegated to the current series source.
Note that the list source is the only editable source, so after you assign,
for example, a random chart source to the series, a call to AddXY
will raise an exception.
Each data item has the following fields: X, Y, YList, Color, Text.
Sorted sources
If it is known that X values of the source are ascending,
some additional optimizations like binary search become possible.
So all sources have IsSorted
property which helps determine that.
Multi-valued sources
Sources can contain multiple Y values for each X value.
These values are stored in the YList
field of the source data item.
The number of Y values is determined by the YCount
property.
Note that the first Y value is stored in Y field anyway, so YCount
= 3
means that values are stored in Y
, YList[0]
and YList[1]
.
Additional values may be used by various series -- for example, stacked bars or bubble charts.
List source
TListChartSource
is a basic chart source, storing chart data inside itself.
As such, you can use Add
and Delete
function to change source data.
The source also has DataPoints
property to allow setting data at design time.
This property is a TStringList, with each line representing a data point.
Line consists of X, Y, optional YList, Color and Text values separated by | (vertical bar) character.
Note that DataPoints
property is designed primarily for sample and demo code.
It is very inefficient, and you should not use it to add data points from the code.
You can control X value sorting by setting the Sorted
property.
Note when Sorted
is set to true, list source sorts the data and keeps it sorted
after insertion of new points. If inserted points are not sorted, this may result
in quadratic running time.
To avoid this, you should so either set Sorted
to true only after insertion,
or pre-sort your data.
Random source
TRandomChartSource
source generates random data in the given range and is intended mostly to use in demos.
You can also use it as design-time replacement for you actual data source.
This will let you see and change the look of your chart without having to run the application.
Each random source uses its own independent random number generator to guarantee stability of its values.
User-defined source
This source may be used if you already have your data in memory, but in a format different from the data items used in TAChart. Using user-defined source to access your data directly instead of first moving it all into a list source may (or may not) be beneficial for speed.
You can of course also use a user-defined source to generate, filter or modify data.
Note that if the Sorted
property is set to true, it is the responsibility
of the event handler to provide actually sorted data.
Database source
TDbChartSource
takes data directly from a database.
It is contained in a separate unit to avoid introducing a db-aware component dependency
into every project using TAChart.
The following properties contain database field names for data item fields:
Property | Access method |
---|---|
FieldX |
AsFloat |
FieldY |
AsFloat |
FieldColor |
AsInteger |
FieldText |
AsString |
If FieldX
property is empty, RecNo is used instead.
To get multi-valued source, set FieldY
property to a comma-separated list of field names.
Note that YCount
will be set automatically -- trying to set it by hand will raise an exception.
Calculated source
TCalculatedChartSource
is the source used for manipulating data taken from the
Origin
source.
This source performs transformations in the following order:
- Y reordering -- Y values of multi-valued source can be duplicated, removed or exchanged according to
ReorderYList
property, which is a comma-separated list of original Y value indexes. Step skipped ifReorderYList
is empty. - Accumulation -- replaces each item's Y values by some function (for example, sum or average) of the last
AccumulationRange
items. Step skipped if theAccumulationMethod
property iscamNone
. - Percentage -- replace each Y value by the percentage of total of all Y values for that item. Useful for drawing "stacked percentage" bar and area charts. Step skipped if the
Percentage
property is false.
Efficiency notes
Primary data source API allows random access. Nevertheless, many sources, in particular random, database and calculated, may exhibit quadratic or worse behavior if actually accessed randomly. TAChart itself takes care to only use sequential access (although it may require several passes). Sources optimize sequential access by using internal state. User code should be careful not to reset this state during chart drawing from event handlers or custom series code.
A notable exception is the list source, which is guaranteed to provide fast random access.
It may be used to cache slow sources with the help of CopyForm
procedure.
Coordinates and axises
TAChart uses three coordinate systems:
- Axis coordinates (known in some other applications as object coordinates) -- this is the "raw" coordinate values obtained from the data. As the name implies, axis coordinates are interpreted in terms of specific axis -- the same coordinate value may have different meaning depending on the axis it is applied to.
- Graph coordinates (aka world coordinates) are converted from the axis coordinates using axis transformation, such as logarithmic scale. Graph coordinates are common for all objects in the chart.
- Image coordinates (aka screen coordinates) are converted from graph coordinates based on the chart viewport. This transformation is always linear and can be influenced by chart tools such as zooming and panning.
You can add or remove an arbitrary number of axises by editing AxisList
property.
By default, chart have two axises: one horizontal and one vertical.
They are accessible via BottomAxis
and LeftAxis
properties.
Note that those properties are aliases to AxisList[0]
and AxisList[1]
,
so if you remove those default axises, accessing BottomAxis
and LeftAxis
will return nil.
Axis transformations
Axis transformations are grouped in the TChartAxisTransformations
component.
It contains a list of transformations which are applied in the order given.
(For example, performing scale before and after logarithm will yield different results).
For transformations to have an effect, you should:
- Make sure
Enabled
property is true for all transformations. - Assign transformations component to
Transformations
property of at least one axis. - Assign
AxisIndexX
and/orAxisIndexY
properties of the series to the appropriate axis index.
Note that by default, AxisIndexX
and AxisIndexY
have a special value of -1,
which means "ignore axis transformations". Also note that if you add or remove axises, the indexes may change.
You can rotate the series by assigning both AxisIndexX
to vertical axis and AxisIndexY
to the horizontal axis.
Linear and logarithmic transformation
Those are simple arithmetic transformations.
Auto-scaling transformation
To display several independently scaled series, assign them to two or more axises
and apply TAutoScaleAxisTransform
to each axis.
See "axistransf" demo, page "Linear", checkbox "Auto scale".
By using MinValue
and MaxValue
properties you can control the in graph coordinates
of the auto-scaled series. For example, by setting one transformation to a range from 0 to 1, and another
to a range from 1 to 2, you will confine all the series using the first transformation to the upper half of the chart,
and all the series using the second transformation to the lower half (assuming there are no unassigned series left).
User-defined transformation
You can create you own transformation either by inheriting from TAxisTransform
,
or, if you prefer "visual" programming, by using TUserDefinedAxisTransform
.
In either case there are two basic requirements:
AxisToGraph
andGraphToAxis
functions should be defined everywhere in data range and inverse of each other (for example, avoid now only dividing, but also multiplying by zero).- functions should be monotonic.
Extents and margins
Extents
Chart extent is a rectangle in graph coordinates.
There are some extents defined by TChart:
- Full extent -- usually determined automatically as the area encompassing all the data from series. Returned by
GetFullExtent
function. - Fixed extent -- determined by
TChart.Extent
property. May override full extent calculation partially or fully. LogicalExtent
-- the extent requested by user to be seen on chart image. Writing to this property if the official way to change chart extent by the external code. For example,LogicalExtent := GetFullExtent
is (almost) equivalent to callingZoomFull
procedure.CurrentExtent
-- the extent actually displayed to the user. May differ from theLogicalExtent
due to the need to reserve space for series [#Marks|marks], inner chart [#Margins|margins] etc.
Margins
Margin is a distance reserved around the edges of rectangular region. Margins are measured in image units (usually pixels). Chart itself have two margins:
- Internal (
Margins
property) -- applied after the axises drawing. Are also influenced by series marks and series themselves. - External (
MarginsExternal
property) -- applied before the axises drawing. Are also influenced by axis marks and arrows.
Optimization notes
Calculation of CurrentExtent
and actual margins is non-trivial iterative process (see TChart.PrepareAxis
code for details).
Although usually fast, in complex cases it can require multiple passes through chart sources.
Tools
Chart tools define reaction of the chart to various user actions, primarily mouse movements and clicks. You can see examples of tools usage in "tools" demo.
Tools are grouped in TChartToolset
component,
which should be assigned to chart's Toolset
property.
Same toolset can be used in several charts.
If Toolset
is unassigned, for compatibility reasons built-in toolset consisting of
drag zoom and [[#Reticule tool|reticule] tools is used.
Each user action, tools in the toolset are processed in order, and for each tool:
- If
Enabled=false
, the tool is ignored. - If
Shift
is not equal to the current shift state, the tool is ignored. - Tools is asked to process the action.
- If the tool signaled that the action is handles, processing is stopped, otherwise it continues to the next tool.
In you application you can create, for example, a toolbar with each button enabling corresponding tool
in the toolset and disabling all others.
Alternatively, by assigning different Shift
values, you can enable several tools at once.
Extent tools
Extent tools modify chart's logical extent.
Zooming tools can be animated by setting AnimationSteps
to the value greater then 1
and AnimationInterval
(in milliseconds).
Panning tools can be restricted to the chart extent on all or some directions
by using LimitToExtent
property.
Zoom drag tool
TZoomDragTool
allows user to zoom in by drawing rectangle with the mouse.
The rectangle then becomes the new logical extent.
Drawing rectangle "in reverse", from the bottom-right to the upper-left corner,
restores zooming to the full extent.
RatioLimit
property lets you restrict zooming to one of the coordinates,
or require it to keep original proportions.
Zoom click tool
TZoomClickTool
allows user to zoom in or out clicking on the chart with the mouse.
ZoomFactor
is the multiplier of scale applied by the tool,
so factors below 1 represent zoom out, and factors above represent zoom in.
ZoomRatio
allows to set non-proportional zoom by indicating ratio of X to Y scale.
If FixedPoint
is true, the location of the mouse click is used as a fixed point
for zooming, otherwise chart image center is used instead.
Pan drag tool
TPanDragTool
allows user to move logical extent by dragging mouse in the directions
indicated by Directions
property.
Pan click tool
TPanClickTool
allows user to move logical extent by clicking inside
Margins
pixels from the corresponding border of chart image.
The panning offset is determined by the distance from the edge of the chart (the nearer to
the edge, the greater).
Setting Interval
in milliseconds will allow to continue panning with the given
interval until the moue button is up.
Data tools
Data tools are linked to specific data series via AffectedSeries
property,
which is a string of comma-separated series indexes.
Note that indexes may change if you add or remove series.
When the data tool is activated, it determines the nearest point of the affected series
which is located inside of the GrabRadius
(in pixels).
Data point drag tool
TDataPointDragTool
allows user to change data values by dragging the data point.
Note that this requires series' data source to be a list source.
Data point click tool
TDataPointClickTool
allows you to assign OnPointClick
event handler,
which will be called when the user clicks on the data point.
Data point hint tool
TDataPointHintTool
displays hint when the user moves the mouse over the data point.
The hint is either equal to the point label (if UseDefaultHintText=true
) or
determined by calling OnHint
event handler.
Reticule tool
TDataPointHintTool
displays reticule (aka crosshairs) centered on the data point.
User defined tool
To add you own tool, either inherit from TUserDefinedTool
or use it directly,
assigning one or more On{After,Before}{KeyDown,KeyUp,MouseDown,MouseMove,MouseUp} event handlers.
Legend
TODO
Marks
TODO
Drawers
For low-level drawing routines, TAChart uses special set of classes implementing IChartDrawer
interface.
This allows such features as printing charts and exporting them to SVG format.
These classes are called drawing back-ends or drawers for short.
TCanvas drawer
TCanvasDrawer
is the default drawer used to display chart on TCanvas.
This includes screen and various raster image formats.
The image produced by this drawer is used as a reference when developing and debugging other back-ends.
TFPCanvas drawer
SVG drawer
OpenGL drawer
Printer drawer
WMF drawer
AggPas drawer
BGRABitmap drawer
fpvectorial drawer
TODO