README

This is GDGraph, a package to generate charts, using Lincoln Stein's
GD.pm. See the documentation for some history and more information.

The latest release is available from CPAN: http://www.cpan.org/.

INSTALLATION

Requirements:

	perl 5.6.0
	GD >= 1.19 (recommended >= 1.23)
	GD::Text::Align (part of the GDTextUtils package)

GD::Graph will not work with Perl 5.004. It most likely works with
5.005 (except for some odd problems with GD::Graph::Data::read(),
which seem to be related to some obscure 5.005_03 bug, which I have
not been able to track down), but I will no longer actively support it.

to install:

	perl Makefile.PL
	make
	make install

The tests are of limited value. The samples directory contains
examples which also function as a test suite. To see the samples:

	make samples
	(use viewer to see samples/sample*.png or .gif)

or

	cd samples
	make
	(use viewer to see sample*.png)

The documentation available is contained in GD::Graph.pm, as pod. See it
with 

perldoc GD::Graph

after installation or 

perldoc -F Graph.pm

before installation.

TESTED PLATFORMS

I have discontinued this list, because it is too hard to maintain.
There is hardly any code in the module that could provide problems
with inter-platform portability, but you never know. I will always
test the modules against the latest stable perl (5.8.0 right now) and
at least one older version (5.6.2). I will not explicitly test against
older versions of Perl. I normally test against the newest version of
GD, the last pre-2.0 version (1.41), and one version of the pre-PNG
days (1.19). All of this happens on Linux.

AUTHOR

Martien Verbruggen
mgjv@tradingpost.com.au

Currently maintained by Benjamin Warfield
bwarfield@cpan.org

FIRST PNG PORT as Chart::PNGgraph

Steve Bonds
sbonds@agora.rdrop.com

MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES SINCE VERSION 1.34

See file CHANGES

MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES FOR VERSION 1.34

- Added GD::Graph::hbars, to create horizontal bar charts. Many thanks
  to brian d foy for doing almost all of the actual work. :)

MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES FOR VERSION 1.30

- Added GD::Graph::Data as the preferred way of working with data sets.
  Internally all code has been changed to use these objects.
- Many, many fundamental code changes, mainly to facilitate a future
  breakup of the code into separate Data, Chart and Graphics handling.
  All of this is internal, and there are not that many new options.
  (check the CHANGES file for more information)

MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES FOR VERSION 1.20

- Namespace change to GD::Graph
- No more links to GIF or PNG. We return a GD object now. It's the
  user's responsibility to save the right format. GIFgraph and
  (hopefully) Chart::PNGgraph will become wrappers around all this
- Font support no longer part of these modules. Instead the package
  GDTextUtils is necessary.
- Some bug fixes and extra options.

MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES SINCE VERSION 1.10

- Namespace change from GIFgraph --> Chart::PNGgraph
- No longer generates GIF format images due to Unisys LZW patent
- Supports TrueType fonts

MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES SINCE VERSION 1.04

- added bar_spacing option
- added limited support for numerical X axis for equidistant X values
  (NOT for a real numerical graph!), thanks to Scott Prahl.
- routines to automatically 'guess' nice upper and lower values for
  graphs have been replaced by one written by Scott Prahl

MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES SINCE VERSION 1.03

- Added mixed type graph.
  GIFgraph::mixed
  options types and default_type
- Added callback functionality to format y values
  option y_number_format
- Added control over axis label placement
  option [xy]_label_position

MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES SINCE VERSION 1.01

- Vertical printing of X axis labels
- CHANGED DEFAULTS for zero_axis and zero_axis_only
- Fixed problems with negative values, data ranges without 0, and
  printing of the x axis labels (I hope)
- No more support for perl 5.003. Since perl 5.005 is out, and I don't
  have a 5.003 here to test all the time, I won't support it anymore.

MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.91

- Legends
- Support for negative numbers
- Ticks for X axis
- line types and widths
- Allow entries in data set to be undef (to skip them)
- Changed 'zero' angle for pie charts (was right, now is front/bottom)
- Definition of colours now possible. See PNGgraph::colour::read_rgb
  for details
- See file CHANGES for more

BUG FIXES IN THIS VERSION

See file CHANGES

REPORTING BUGS

Please use rt.cpan.org to report any bugs with GD::Graph or GD::Text.
Alternatively, you can email me, but I prefer it if you use the RT
interface. When reporting a bug, please include the version of the
module distribution you use, as well as your Perl version and platform
(perl -V output will do).

NOTES FOR WIN32 and Mac (pre OSX)

These modules _should_ work on all platforms.

Please direct any questions about the availability of these modules as
PPM packages to ActiveState. I only make this available as a standard
tar on CPAN. I have emailed ActiveState to ask what I was supposed to
do, and have, until today, not received any answers. 

THANKS

First of all. many, many thanks to Steve Bonds for adapting GIFgraph to
version 1.20 of GD (the first version that did not support GIF anymore),
and releasing it as Chart::PNGgraph. I really didn't have the time to
look at it, and he stepped in and fixed the headache that Unisys had
given me.

Others who have contributed are mentioned in the documentation for
GD::Graph in the AUTHOR section.

COPYRIGHT

GD::Graph
Copyright (c) 1999-2002 Martien Verbruggen. All rights reserved.
Chart::PNGgraph
Copyright (c) 1999 Steve Bonds.  All rights reserved.
GIFgraph
Copyright (c) 1995-1999 Martien Verbruggen. All rights reserved.

This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

I really felt like adding a clause to the copyright that excluded Unisys
and its employees from the use of any of my code, at least without a
license bought from me. I decided against it for several reasons, the
main one being that I would just feel too dirty doing that.