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

INSTALLATION

needed to install (also see TESTED PLATFORMS):

	perl 5.005
	GD >= 1.19 (recommended >= 1.23)
	GD::Text::Align (part of the GDTextUtils package)

It is very likely that it runs on 5.004, but I haven't tested it, and I
won't support it, simply because I don't have the platforms to test it
on. 5.005 has been available since July 1998, and should be installed.
It is also possible that it works with older versions of GD.  Again, I
have not tested it.

to install:

	perl Makefile.PL
	make
	make test
	make install

NB: make test may report errors. If you are not using GD 1.20 this is
normal. Because of differences in the way GD implements fonts and
polygons in the various versions, the produced Graphs will differ very
slightly. If you see this behaviour, please 'make' the samples in the
samples directory, and check the produced PNGs visually. If they look
ok, then PNGgraph is ok.

to see some samples:

	cd samples
	make

That should generate a set of pngs, which you can view using the HTML
pages in the same directory (or whichever other way pleases you).

The documentation available is contained in PNGgraph.pm, as pod.

The latest release should normally be available from CPAN.

TESTED PLATFORMS (also see NOTES FOR WIN32)

Version 1.20:
- perl 5.005_03 on Linux GD 1.19 and 1.23

I'd appreciate it if people let me know about other combinations of
Perl, GD and OS that it runs on. When I get back to work I'll test it on
Solaris and NT (maybe).

GIFgraph has been known to run well on ActiveState's ports of Perl for
Win32, but I haven't tested it myself for GD::Graph.

AUTHOR

Martien Verbruggen
mgjv@comdyn.com.au

FIRST PNG PORT as Chart::PNGgraph

Steve Bonds
sbonds@agora.rdrop.com

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

TODO

- 3d look for graphs
- logarithmic scaling
- numerical X axes (halfway there)
- Autoloading/splitting, etc

BUG FIXES IN THIS VERSION

See file BUGS

NOTES FOR WIN32

I have not tested the PNG port on Win32.  sbonds.

GIFgraph installs and runs well under Gurusamy Sarathy's port of
perl for win32, and its usage is exactly the same as documented.

It may very well, and _should_ work on the 5.005 ports, although I
have personally not tested that yet.

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 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, 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.

