VCL Guage 8.01

Paul T · Post by **Paul T** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 2:39 pm

The sample circular guages in the gallery show a nice choice of settings.

To save a lot of trial and error on my part trying to replicate these, can somebody post the properties used to generate these guages, particularly the one with the white face ?

I guess the samples were generated in .NET prior to the VCL release, but I'm hoping the same look can be achieved in the new VCL release ?

Thanks
Paul.

Paul T · Post by **Paul T** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 7:18 pm

Further to my earlier post, I've seen the post by jls "Guages Issues / Questions" and agree with it, particularly points 5 & 7.

Adding to that I have spent a fair amount of time already investigating the circular guage. I don't want to appear negative, but from the issues I've come across already, it is not worthy of the quality exhibited by the rest of TChart.

1). I wish the .NET / VCL differences in the circular guage had been pointed out before it was delivered. It is somewhat disingenuous to show only the higher quality .NET guages in the gallery and then point out afterwards that the VCL offering can't match it for asthetic quality. I'd suggest you clearly point this out with separate .NET and VCL gallery examples.

2). The Axis / Label font seems to be ignored at run time. The design time view seems to reflect changes , but is then ignored when run (at least in the IDE).

3). Trying to get a white "back" to the guage has prooved very tricky. Just using pure white resulted in the run time guage being black. The design time again showing correctly. The only way I can get a white guage is to use custom colours that are slightly off pure white. If done using a gradient it also seems to need start,middle and end specifying - again the slightly custom off white.

The common theme seems to be that at design time the guage will appear as designed, but run time is a different matter.

Again, I'm not looking to be negative here, we do have a need for the upgraded TChart, but we specifically purchased this new VCL release for the guages. What we have is disappointing, but I'm hoping that it will still be useable, if not up to what the gallery shows on the web site.

A maintenance release very soon with guage fixes and upgrades would be greatly welcomed.

Post by **Yeray** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 9:24 am

Hi Paul,

I've been testing CircularGauges and I found some problems with labels and coloring it (including hand, gradients and backcolor) and I've added it to our wish-list to be fixed in future releases. (TV52012498).

Please be aware at this forum for new release announcements and what's being implemented/fixed on them.

Paul T · Post by **Paul T** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 9:44 am

Thanks Yeray, I'll look forward to any fixes in the upcoming maintenance releases.

For what it's worth, in general, I have found that properties set in code are effective at run time. Those changes made at design time in the chart editor tend to be lost at run time. I don't know how widely this applies, but I'm working on the principle that if it a chart doesn't hold its design time value, try setting it in code.

Could you also address the more general points about graphic quality, as compared to the .NET release and the lack of clarity in the gallery when showing guages. I appreciate there are difficulties due to the facilities offered in .NET, but I'm sure what is in the VCL can still be greatly improved (adding gradients to the inner, outer and middle frames for one). If there remains a significant disparity between the .NET and .VCL then I still think you really need to make this clear in the gallery of guages. When those guages were solely .NET, no problem. Now they cover both .NET and VCL the implication is that the result is the same regardless of technology. You have at least one new user of the pro TChart now due to that implication...

Regards,
Paul.

Narcís · Post by **Narcís** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 2:13 pm

Hi Paul,

Thank you very much for your suggestions. Latest v8 maintenance release was the first version when new Gauges where included and they certainly need being improved. Also, I've added your comments to our wish-list to be considered for next releases.

ToniK · Post by **ToniK** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 6:16 am

Hi Narcis and Yeray,

I would like to add TAntiAliasTool on circular gauge also to the list of things to fix. I did a quick testing with it and it doesn't work correctly with gauge. Here are the steps to recreate the problem:

1. Add circular gauge series to chart
2. Hide frame from the gauge series
3. Add TAntiAliasTool to chart

Now when antialias tool is enabled, the gauge looks much nicer but it's also drawn incorrectly.

ToniK

Narcís · Post by **Narcís** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 8:03 am

Hi ToniK,

Thanks for your suggestions. I've added your request to our wish-list to be enhanced for next releases.

ToniK · Post by **ToniK** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 12:13 pm

Hi Narcis,

We tested circular gauge series a bit more and noticed two dysfunctional features: SVG and XAML export. We would like to use those, but both of them generate incorrect results. Both vector formats have strange, extra lines. Generated XAML won't even open with XAML viewer coming with .NET 3.0. It just reports invalid empty fill tag.

You can try to recreate these by simple adding circular gauge to a chart and exporting the chart to SVG or XAML. We hope that you could improve SVG and XAML format support in TChart, since they are very important for us.

-ToniK

Narcís · Post by **Narcís** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:38 pm

Hi ToniK,

Thanks for the information. I've been able to reproduce this (TV52012532) here and added the issue to our defect list to be fixed for future releases.

	Yeray Alonso Development & Support Steema Software Av. Montilivi 33, 17003 Girona, Catalonia (SP)
	Please read our Bug Fixing Policy