Extension talk:PChart4mw

Welcome to the talk-page of pchart4mw. Discussions can be done on this page.

Integration with Semantic MediaWiki (SMW)
Hi Thank you for this extension, really nice. I want to ask if there's a plan of integrating this to SMW? This is way better than the Semantic result format graph format (google)  printer

Gérard 18:58, 2 December 2009 (UTC) We're glad to hear from you and that you're pleased with the extension. We have no plans in that direction, at least not yet.


 * I'd also appreciate efforts towards integration with SMW!! - Bernhard

pchart4mw version 1.1.0
We have released a new version of pchart4mw (version 1.1.0 on June 11th 2010). This version of pchart4mw can now be used as parser function. This enables integrating pchart4mw's charting capabilities with other extensions like Semantic MediaWiki (SMW).

Now we have a question (request) to you. Could you share your experience integrating pchart4mw with SMW? Both here and if possible with the SMW community to direct others to these new possibilities? Gérard 08:10, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This is an awesome release, I haven't tried it yet but I was using Pchart4mw w/SMW since its first release by setting the query result to a variable:

 ,, savings: , 

Now this will be more easier and more better.

cheers Msevero

Thank you for your response, please let us know if this new version works as expected with SMW. If your site is a public site we'd appreciate a link as well. Gérard 05:12, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Large Dataset Line Graphs
Nice extension, thanks for adding it. Using the pChart classes gives much more swishy renders than using GnuPlot. There is one problem I have not been able to solve for my planned implementation though. When trying to create a line graph with a large amount of data, e.g.:

the x-axis labels become overlaid on top of each other until all you get is a grey line - i.e. there is no setting to say "show 5 x labels", giving me just "0, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500", on the x-axis. The extension seems to be hardwired to show every x-label as it has been entered in to the data.

This is a bit of a show-stopper for me as I need to plot 500+ point datasets as line graphs with useable x-axis ticks. At the moment I am going to have to stick with GnuplotBasic as it has the configuration to do that. Have I missed some obvious control parameter or is this not yet possible with PC4MW? MLCT 15:36, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

pchart4mw version 1.2.0
Hello, We've looked in to it. Indeed it was a missing feature in pchart4mw. We've added this feature for you. We just released a new version of pchart4mw version 1.2.0. This version now has a new parameter skiplabel=x where x is the number of labels to skip. We hope this will work for you. Gérard 16:04, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Decimals ignored in axis labels
Hi, I'm having a problem where the labels for the y-axis are not showing up properly when I use floating point values.

 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 

With the specified code above, the labels for the y-axis come out like this: http://img15.imageshack.us/f/33312048.png/

pchart4mw version 1.2.0
Hello, This problem is also solved in the new version 1.2.0 of pChart4mw. We've added a parameter decimals=x specifying the number of decimals to show on the y-axis. We hope this will work for you.

Scalable for very large wikis?
This extension can use a web service as an external resource for charting. Does it make this extension scalable for very large wikis?--almaghi 17:36, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes it does. This configuration option is available for situations where many charts change often. These situations can consume a lot of processing power from the server in creating chart images.

Creating chart images is a CPU intensive process. Depending on the charting intensity on the wiki a site might require more powerful server processing capacity. pchart4mw's web service option is specifically created to enable separating the processing for creating chart images from processing for the main wiki site.

However, any site with moderate changes of its charts should have no problem and should run perfectly well without a pchart4mw web service configuration. Make sure you really need this.

If you decide using pchart4mw's web service configuration option you might be the first user using this. We would appreciate if you'd share your experience and how to's. You could create a sub-page of this talk page for it. Gérard 05:24, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup
Does the extension clean up the image files which are no longer in use (like after you edit a graph, or after you remove a graph code from your page)? Huji 12:22, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

No, see manual: http://code.google.com/p/pchart4mw/wiki/SiteMaintenance or extensions page under 'maintenance of your site'. Gérard 13:33, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Colors
Do we have the option to chose the line colors in a line graph? --Huji 12:22, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, see manual: http://code.google.com/p/pchart4mw/wiki/Parameters#Colors and http://code.google.com/p/pchart4mw/wiki/ColorSchemes Gérard 13:34, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Clarification
Just to clarify, this extension doesn't use any online services (like Google Chart APIs, etc); everything is done locally?

For example, if I have a network outage, mw can still generate graphs? 202.167.15.162 02:51, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed: This extension doesn't use any online services, it does everything locally on your MediaWiki installation. You don't need an external network connection to generate graphs. This way your chart data from the wikipage is not send to any online service.

Gérard 14:41, 5 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Excellent! Keep up the good work. 202.167.15.161 05:18, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

pChart4mw + External Data extensions
Hehe, I've been experimenting with pChart4mw and Extension:External_Data because that's naturally what you'd want to do, right?

So I've made a csv file and read it in with External Data: {{#for_external_table: ,, } which produces Jan,6748,4301Feb,3911,5019Mar,3019,3941Apr,4810,6412May,2203,4823Jun,4510,4110Jul,3918,5510Aug,8810,2930Sep,7182,3504Oct,6911,3881Nov,6749,4761Dec,7184,4918 Not really good when I wrap pChart4mw tags around it

http://i38.tinypic.com/15zquir.png

OK, no real issues; the canonical solution to this is {{#for_external_table: {{{month}}},{{{US}}},{{{EU}}} } which produces (in the html source) Jan,6748,4301 Feb,3911,5019 Mar,3019,3941 Apr,4810,6412 May,2203,4823 Jun,4510,4110 Jul,3918,5510 Aug,8810,2930 Sep,7182,3504 Oct,6911,3881 Nov,6749,4761 Dec,7184,4918 Looking great, but now pChart4mw does this:

http://i33.tinypic.com/34pb71c.png

Now, I don't know if it's a pChart4mw or an External Data issue, but is it possible that pChart4mw is not parsing the tag correctly? If it is not supposed to, can it be something to be added in the future?

For the time being, I'm using this workaround: {{#pLines: ymin=0|ymax=10000|axiscolor=888888|cubic|filled|angle=90|plots|legend|data= {{#for_external_table: ,US,EU {{{month}}},{{{US}}},{{{EU}}} }} }}

http://i34.tinypic.com/2ij2hok.png

Other workarounds include using a different delimiter (eg ';') and hacking the pChart4mw source (but I don't really wanna do that. I've also tried various ways of putting newline characters with no luck. 202.167.15.161 03:08, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

L.S., I am not familiar with the external data extension. (It seems you're trying to accomplish something that is outside  the design of pchart4mw.) I struggle understanding what the syntax is you want to see work in combination with pchart4mw. Can you provide an example of what you ideally would like to see work? Gérard 10:26, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * After some investigation, I don't think there's an issue with either extension. The correct raw input is being passed into pchart2mw (I checked by returning the raw input) so I think something far sinister is happening. The workaround is fine for now since I'm using these extensions for internal purposes. All the recommendations for parsing you are already using, so I'm not really sure why it's causing the errors. I think the effort required is not worth the outcome, so I'm gonna leave it until I find some time. All in all, great extension!202.167.15.163 05:06, 30 August 2010 (UTC)