Question on ArrayViewer in cvf

[Intel_C_Intel]

I'm not sure what the problem could be, I haven't done any official CVF AV support for a couple of years now, and don't have CVF Pro installed on my system. The Aviewerlib code just sets the Avis2d.ocx properties to set the label, so it should work...

Are you calling with a C string? I expect the routine won't work if it's passed a Fortran string.

John

[rahzan]

Thanks very much for your reply.

Adding a null to the string seems to help, execpt it only turned on the label on the X-axis!!

I have something like:

call FavSetAxisLabel (plotID,X_AXIS,LabelX//nul,status)
call FavSetUseAxisLabel (plotID,X_AXIS,1,status)!enable label display
call FavSetAxisLabel (plotID,Y_AXIS,LabelY//nul,status)
call FavSetUseAxisLabel (plotID,Y_AXIS,1,status)

I get the LabelX but not LabelY. And when I open the Settings-Axis from the Aviewer menu, the Y-Label is completely grayed out.

Is there something special about Y-Label which needs more work or not allowed under certain conditions??

[Intel_C_Intel]

I thinkfor the 2D graphs, the vertical axis is actually the Z-axis. Try setting the Z-axis label and see if that works.

John

[rahzan]

Thanks.

Methinks that you are right. Since when I look at the settings-Axis the Ylabel is grayed but Z is not. HOWEVER, I changed:

call FavSetAxisLabel (plotID,Y_AXIS,LabelY//nul,status)
call FavSetUseAxisLabel (plotID,Y_AXIS,1,status)
TO

call FavSetAxisLabel (plotID,Z_AXIS,LabelY//nul,status)
call FavSetUseAxisLabel (plotID,Z_AXIS,1,status)

And it does not help, and in the Settings-Axis the Z_axis name isa generic "Z-Axis" whereas the X is what I set it to be.

It must be that the above calls are not right or need more work, maybe the numeric legend on the vertical axis overrides the name??

More hints will be appreciated.

[Intel_C_Intel]

I'm notsure, but Z-axis might only apply for certain plot types. If you look at the "XYZ Plot" do you see the Z-axis axis settings menu grayed out?

John

[rahzan]

Z_AXIS is the right one,

I was able to get the axis label to show by unchecking the "Font AutoDetail" in Settings-Axis window. The axis legned gets smaller in font and the label appears. The if I check it back on, the fonts get bigger, as they were, but the label stays.

So it is as if the numeric legend is drawn after the label and covers it up.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks.

[Intel_C_Intel]

All I can suggest is setting AutoDetail to false and trying out different sizes for the legend and label fonts.

By the way (if you don't mind me asking), do you any plans to switch over to IVF? As a CVF AV user, what features would you like to see in Intel AV?

John

[rahzan]

To my own GREAT disappointment, I have not switched to Intel for several big reasons:

1. Somewhere along the way, IVF lost the com-wizard tool. (Don't get me started on how shortsighted (to put it politely) fortran designers are from the business point of view, and how important standardized abiliites to communicate with other software is.)

2. IVF decided NOT to implement the object oriented features of f2k for many years to come. That is why I use Lahey as it is a lot more progressive on this sort of thing. (see again my comment above)

3. I actually bought IVFv7 in hope of getting an upgrade price for v8 butthe promisewas retracted a year later.

I would like AV to do more tricks like multiple charts on the same display. Iuse fortran for bothmy physics research and financial applications. In both areas it is often necessary to plot stacked/synchornzied multiple charts.

Also there is a standard collection of features that goes with investment related plotters. See for example ChartFX-FE(see also TA-Lib.org for the formulas). We use ChartFX for those functions but I am very unhappy with their non-existent support and unnecessarily compliacted programming requirements.

Also I highly recommend you improve your documentation relative to that which came with CVF66. It is clearly written by someone who has never done technical writing before and does not enjoy doing so either, and assumes the readers know as much as he does.

I have worked woth plotters since the days of pounch cards where we did plotting by putting x's in arrays and printing them on 132 column paper. I have also worked with just about ALL financial charting apps out there if you want to go inthat direction. So if you want to give me your email, I can probably send you alot more as I think of them.

Tim

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Tim,

I wanted to respond to a couple of points.

We did not retract any promise of upgrade. If you bought V7, you were entitled to 8.0 if it came out within a year of your purchase or you could extend your support for $200 and get new releases that way.

As for the documentation, it is the same team of writers.

[rahzan]

Thanks Steve for paying attention to these here proceedings. Always good to know relevant people are paying attention.

1. The retraction of the offer had some complicated details (which I now cannot recall) which was discussed in a number of threads. So there is no point hashing that up again.

2. It is hard to believe that the same people who wrote the compiler help also wrote the AV help. One is quite good and the other, well... nearly useless. The only way I got anything to work was by emulating the examples.

Tim

[Intel_C_Intel]

You're referring to the Intel AV help?

Due to time constraints the AV help is limited to basically reference information, so I agree it's not much help for getting started. This year I'm hoping to work with the doc team to put out a series of tutorials on AV. Hopefully that will improve the situation.

The ability to customize the UI through Page objects (basically HTML+script code) allows a lot of flexibility that was missing in Compaq AV. The problem with using Page objects (for most people)is that itrequires a fairly detailed knowledge of HTML and scripting and the AV object model. To help make the use of Pageobjects more accessible, a Macro facility was added in the 8.1 release (File->Run Macro in the Array Viewer). Macros allownew Pages to be created via a Wizard. For example, the ImageSlice macro allows a 3D array to be viewed as a set of orthogonal slices (see the HDF5/astrojet.h5 sample data file).

Anyway, my point is that once we know what people are looking to do (e.g. display multiple charts in one page), we can add a macroto accompishthis to AV. Since the macro isjust an external file, it is fairlyeasy to customize it if it doesn't do exactly what you are looking for.For example, I'll look into creating a macro for the creation of multiple charts.

Please let us know what features you'd like to see in AV. We can't do everything, but it will be a big help to see what people are looking for. Intel Premier support can be a hassle, but on the whole I think we're very responsive to customer issues and feature requests (well aside from the com-wizard!).

By the way, I have looked at ChartFX. They seem to have a more business-oriented focus, so they support some things (e.g. Pie Charts) that, while not hard to implement, we haven't added to AV yet.

John

[rahzan]

I was referring to the AV for cvf help.

I also was referring to chartFX-FE (financial edition). Mainly just the ability to draw prices in about half dozen more/less standard formats.

The stacked charts are very important, also that one needs to be able to synchronize the cursor among the charts. AV160 can plot multiple lines on the SAME chart but if the curvehave vastly different scales then there is a big problem.

Another annoyance is that AV160 wants to plot the whole array at all times, and often the data is coming in over time and the unknown points must not be required. That's assuming I even know the size of the array in advance.

Well there is a lot, but chartfx-FE and a zillion other packegs can show the financial stuff at least.

Another good idea might be to allow drawing objects such as lines and text.

Also make it so that whenI X-out of the Aviewer, it does not remain in the process list, until the calling app is actually closed or the close method is called explicitly.

AV160a great package in that it is fast and it is great for quick and dirty plotting which often solves more problems than anything more elaborate. If it could do the fancier stuff then it would be even better.

[Intel_C_Intel]

Oh, OK. Well the Intel AV help has about the same scope as the Compaq AV help, so I predict you won't be too happy with it either.

By "stacked charts" do you mean charts that are laid out in non-overlapping rectangles, or do you mean charts that are stacked ontop of each other? Not sure what you mean by "synchronize the cursor among the charts".

Intel AV supports the concept of "Array Sections". A plot can reference an entire array or a section of an array (or one element of a compound type array).

For text, each chart in Intel AV can display multiple "Caption Objects". You can do lines as well, but you'll need to provide an array to specify the end points.

Compaq AV was designed to enable graphs to be created without a lot of setup, but didn't pretend to be a tool for "presentation graphics". Intel AV offers a lot more under-the-hood customization possibilities while attempting to remain an easy to use program.

Tim, I hope you are able to move over to IVF soon. I'm looking forward to your input on Intel AV. Can't you use the CVF Com wizard and re-compile the generated sources under IVF?

John

[rahzan]

I made up the term "stacked chart". It only means plots of series that are synchornized, like temperature at different location, or stocks and interest rates over a time period.

Stacking these plots helps the eye see correlations, but more specifically, if you point the cursor on one chart the other should move to the corresponding spot on the x-axis. The series have different values and the y-axis may have vastly different scales and types.

[Intel_C_Intel]

I see what you mean. I'll look into creating an example.

[g_f_thomas]

John:

One of the main reasons I haven't switched to IVF from CVF is that the documentation and illustrative samples for Iav, in particular, AvGraph2/3D.ocx, are so inadequate. As you know, the object model is far more complex than for Cav and the AvGraph2/3D.ocx bears only a nodding relation to its CVF counterpart. In fairness AvGraph2/3D.ocx appears to support text for AvAxesLabel but only via setting the Source property (assuming one knows how to do so) to a dataset object and its datatype and dataspace thingies as opposed to an in code programmatic route. Also, it doesn't accommodate logarithmetic scaling for 3D graphs. Further, how does one show the palette for a 3D graph?, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

HTH,
Gerry T.

[Intel_C_Intel]

Thanks for your input. There is some rational for the changes in the control methods... In Cav if you started out using the agl/av routines (so that Viewer is used to display the graphs), and then moved over to a Win32 app with the ocx's, you'd have to rewrite your agl/av calls using the ocx properties/methods.

With Intel AV there is one object model API that is common for viewer and ocx-based apps. You'll note that the number of methods/properties in the graph ocx has gone from more than a hundred to about twelve. This is because all the calls that effect the graph properties have moved to the object model.

This is offers some relief w.r.t. illustrative samples, since it enables you to lift code from an example that uses the Viewer into an app that uses the AV ocxs. Even the JavaScript examples should be fairly easy to translate into Fortran. Still, we'll try to come up with more examples for the next release.

Also, we'll work on adding support for log scalling and palette's in 3D Graphs.

John

[g_f_thomas]

Thanks for the explanations. I've never used the Compaq AV in an app. Ditto for the agl/av. Instead I use the ocx's to advantage. I would like to have done likewise with the Intel replacement product and I'm sure it can be done with some effort.

Anyways, I look forward to support for log scaling and palette display in 3D Graphs. How about support for ROI and the marker? Quiver plots in 2/3D would be wonderful.

Ciao,
Gerry T.

[Intel_C_Intel]

Your welcome. Here's one more thought about using the Viewer vs. ocx's:

If you are using the ocx's in your app, you might find bringing up the Viewer as well is handy for development... You can play around with trying out different graph property settings in the Viewer. The changes will show up both in the Viewer and your app. If the change is something you want to keep, you can make the corresponding code change in your app.

ROI is supported by the AvSection object as I've described above. There is marker support (the Fortran IDE Array Visualizer window uses a marker), but it's rather hidden. Let me know if youwant some hints on setting it up.

There is support for Quiver plots in 2D (the Vector2D plot). I've always thought the quiver plots in 3D are hard to interpret. I'll be looking into adding support for other forms of 3D vector visualizations (e.g. stream lines).

John