open flash chart puttering
A few weeks ago, I found Open Flash Chart and put it in my list of things to look at. It’s pretty slick-looking. What I found, though, is that the helper libraries are sort of wretchedly interfaced. Basically, they all output data files that the flash plugin uses to build charts.
Lines in the data file seem to work like this:
&method=param1,param2,param3,...&
The format of the data file is very similar to the PHP methods, but there’s often a difference or two. For example, here’s a PHP method prototype:
line_dot(
int $line_width, int $dot_size, string $colour, string $key_text,
[ int $key_size ]
);
The line in the file, though, looks like this:
&line_dot=$line_width,$colour,$key_text,$key_size,$dot_size&
The documentation on the web page is only for the PHP library, and it’s very strangely organized. I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth the effort to figure out the data file format from the PHP and document it, and possibly construct a better Perl interface.
I’d be more interested if I had more of a need for charts!