OpenOffice and Charts

Open Office Calc allows you to generate charts just like in Microsoft Excel. The charts are a bit basic IMHO in comparison but you can generate simple bar charts, scatter graphs and pie charts. Unfortunately if you then try and alter the chart using the OOo API you will discover that even though you have given your chart a name you cannot access it by this name easily. Why? It is because:

1. The chart is an embedded object
2. The embedded object is given a unique name in the calc workbook such as Object 1
3. Your name is given to the object using the XShape interface.

Another problem is if you want to find the exact cells your chart covers in a particular worksheet you cannot.

These are annoying limitations of the current API but luckily the Chart2 project is being done.




Technorati Tags: Openoffice, Java,charts, programming languages