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September 2002 Column Article

Graphics Server .NET - Preview I

Graphics Server .NET is due out shortly and this month's article previews two of the many new features available. You'll see how the improvements in Graphics Server .NET allow the user to take advantage of today's innovative and changing technology to create stunning, versatile graphs and charts like never before.

Graphics Server .NET has been completely rewritten in C#. Because the software has been completely rewritten from scratch, the ability to create graphs in a highly modifiable way has been improved in many key areas. The object oriented programming model allows the programmer much more fuctionality and flexibility.

One of the many key areas expanded in Graphics Server.NET is the manageability and formatting of a variety of backgrounds within a graph. Each graph element, titles, legends, grids, annotations, graph bars, scatter-graph points, etc., can have its own background in GS.NET. Previous versions of Graphics Server allowed only one background for the entire graph, and the background settings in these older versions were limited. The background object in GS.NET allows for many different elements to have their own unique background, and each background can have a myriad of different settings. The background objects now include gradients, simple colors, images, textures or patterns. An extreme example of applying different backgrounds to separate graph elements is shown below.

There are six different backgrounds applied to the graph above.. The overall background is a tiled (repeated) image file (see behind the "Different Backgrounds" title and around the edges of the graph). The second background, the legend background, is composed of a gradient that radiates outward from the center starting out dark yellow and ending light yellow. The third background is the grid background, the portion behind the X and Y-axes, and is composed of a vertical, middle-out gradient from red to purple. The fourth, fifth and sixth backgrounds are for the different bar graphs. The green bars are vertical gradients, the gray bars are horizontal, middle-out gradients, and the blue bars with white semi-circles in them are bars with an image background. This basic example shows how flexible the background object is, how pervasive it is in the multitude of different visual elements available on the graph.

Another improvement in Graphics Server .NET is the new text capabilities. Now, in addition to the standard graph annotations (title, X-axis and Y-axis labels, and legend) an unlimited number of text annotations can be added. Not only can annotations be added as desired, they can each have their own backgrounds as well. As described above, annotations can have a variety of backgrounds consisting of different gradients, colors, images, textures and patterns. The annotations can be rotated to any degree 0 - 360, and can be any font size, type, and style the user has available. The legend and axes text can also be rotated, sized, font type defined, and colored in anyway that suits the user.

The example below has a variety of different text annotations placed around the graph, with the text examples displaying different rotations, colors, sizes, backgrounds, and font types.

This preview covers just two of the new features of GS.NET. Look for all kinds of new features in Graphics Server .NET when it ships next quarter.