jfreechart-1.0.1

******************************* * JFREECHART: Version 1.0.1 * ******************************* 27 January 2006 (C)opyright 2000-2006, by Object Refinery Limited and Contributors. ----------------- 1. INTRODUCTION ----------------- JFreeChart is a free chart library for the Java(tm) platform. It runs on the Java 2 Platform (JDK 1.3 or later) and uses the Java 2D API for drawing. JFreeChart is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL). A copy of the licence is included in the distribution. Please note that JFreeChart is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Please refer to the licence for details. ------------------- 2. LATEST VERSION ------------------- The latest version of this class library can be obtained from: http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/ If you have an comments, suggestions or bugs to report, please post a message in the JFreeChart forum. ----------------- 3. DOCUMENTATION ----------------- You can download installation instructions (jfreechart-1.0.1-install.pdf) from the JFreeChart home page or the project page on SourceForge. Further documentation for JFreeChart (the JFreeChart Developer Guide) is available to purchase from by Object Refinery Limited, a company owned and operated by David Gilbert (the original author of JFreeChart). For more information, please see: http://www.object-refinery.com/jfreechart/guide.html Sales of the JFreeChart Developer Guide are an important source of funding for the project. Please help us to continue developing free software. API documentation files in HTML format are available on-line. If you wish to keep a local copy of the API files, you can regenerate them directly from the source code. You can do this using the 'gjdoc' or 'javadoc' utilities directly, or with the Ant script (build.xml) included in the distribution. ----------------- 4. DEPENDENCIES ----------------- JFreeChart has the following dependencies: (a) JDK 1.3 or higher - JFreeChart requires the Java2D and Collections APIs, so it definitely won't work with JDK 1.1 (with a small amount of effort you can get it to compile and run with JDK 1.2). If you are using JFreeChart to create applets, this means that you cannot rely on the JVM integrated with Microsoft's Internet Explorer - your users will need to have the Java 2 plug-in installed. Most other browsers (e.g. Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror) support JDK 1.4 or JDK 1.5. (b) JCommon - version 1.0.0 or later. The runtime jar file is included in the JFreeChart distribution. You can obtain the complete source code for JCommon from: http://www.jfree.org/jcommon/ JCommon is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence. (c) GNU JAXP - a free implementation of the standard XML processing APIs for Java. http://www.gnu.org/software/classpathx/jaxp/ Classes in the org.jfree.data.xml package require this library, or another JAXP v1.1 compliant parser. The gnujaxp.jar file (from the gnujaxp-1.0beta1.zip distribution) is included with JFreeChart. GNU JAXP is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License with an additional library exception. THIS LIBRARY IS ONLY REQUIRED BY JFREECHART IF YOU ARE USING JDK 1.3. (d) servlet.jar - classes in the org.jfree.chart.servlet package require this file. The JFreeChart distribution includes the servlet.jar file distributed with Tomcat 4.1.31. Applicable license terms are published at: http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/LICENSE (e) JUnit - a unit testing framework (the junit.jar runtime file is included in the distribution). JUnit is licensed under the terms of the IBM Common Public License. You can find out more about JUnit and/or download the latest version from: http://www.junit.org The JUnit tests included with JFreeChart have been created using JUnit 3.8. ----------------- 5. GNU CLASSPATH ----------------- GNU Classpath is a project to create a free, clean-room implementation of the standard Java(tm) class libraries: http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/ We test JFreeChart against GNU Classpath-based runtimes to monitor the progress being made by the GNU Classpath hackers. Currently the Graphics2D implementation is insufficient for running JFreeChart, but in most other respects GNU Classpath is "ready" for JFreeChart. Indeed, by utilising bindings for the Cairo vector graphics library, it is possible to get JFreeChart running: http://www.object-refinery.com/jfreechart/free.html If you have time and/or expertise, please consider helping out with the GNU Classpath project. -------------------- 6. ANT BUILD SCRIPT -------------------- An Ant build script (build.xml) is included in the distribution. This is the same script that is used to create the JFreeChart distribution. For more information about Ant: http://ant.apache.org/ Please note that you will need to obtain the servlet.jar file (see the DEPENDENCIES section above) before running the Ant script. ------------------------ 7. THE DEMO APPLICATION ------------------------ A demo application that shows a selection of the charts that can be generated is included in the JFreeChart distribution. To run the demo (using JDK 1.3 or later), use the following command: java -jar jfreechart-1.0.1-demo.jar The complete source code for the demo application is available for download when you purchase the JFreeChart Developer Guide. --------------- 8. LIMITATIONS --------------- JFreeChart has some known limitations that will hopefully be addressed in the future: - with the XYPlot class, when the bounds of the range axis are calculated automatically, all of the data is used, not just the subset that is visible on the chart; - some renderers do not respect the series visibility flags yet; - the chart property editors (accessible by right-clicking on the chart panel) are horribly out of date and probably shouldn't be used; - item labels (if displayed) are not taken into account for the automatically calculated axis range. As a workaround, you can increase the axis margins; - tick labels on a DateAxis that uses a SegmentedTimeline can be problematic; - there is no support for writing charts to JPEG format on JDK 1.3. JPEG is not a good format anyway, it is usually better to use PNG format. If there are other items that you think should be listed here, please post a bug report. --------------- 9. WHAT's NEW --------------- A list of changes in recent versions: 1.0.1 : (27-Jan-2006) - primarily a bug fix release, see the NEWS and ChangeLog files for details. 1.0.0 : (2-Dec-2005) - the first stable release of the JFreeChart class library, all future releases in the 1.0.x series will aim to maintain backward compatibility with this release; - see the ChangeLog file for a detailed list of changes. 1.0.0-rc3 : (28-Nov-2005) - the third "release candidate" for version 1.0.0, this release fixes some issues with the 1.0.0-rc2 release (mainly concerning packaging of resource bundles for localisation). - if no significant problems are reported in the next few days, the 1.0.0 "final" release will be posted on 2-Dec-2005. 1.0.0-rc2 : (25-Nov-2005) - the second "release candidate" for version 1.0.0. If no problems are reported, 1.0.0 "final" will be released on 2-Dec-2005. - see the ChangeLog file for a detailed list of changes in this release. 1.0.0-rc1 : (2-Jun-2005) - this is a "release candidate" for version 1.0.0. If no significant API problems are reported, this release will be re-released as version 1.0.0. - see CHANGELOG.txt for further details. 1.0.0-pre2 :