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x-y plotter

udayapadakandla
Registered: Oct 31 2006
Posts: 14

Is there a way to plot an X-Y scatter graph in Acrobat from a table (like Excel can)?Can Javascript or Formcalc in anyway help generate a "chart" from the values entered in a table?Thanks!

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 8, Windows
thomp
Expert
Registered: Feb 15 2006
Posts: 4411
Forget about LiveCycle documents, they won't help with this. You need to create an Acrobat application with standard Acrobat JavaScript. There are three methods that can be implemented entirely from Acrobat JavaScript.

1. Easy-Shmeasy - Use JavaScript to create markup annotations as the data points. You can even use annotations to create the graph axis. You can put form fields on the document to collect data from the user, pull the data from a spread sheet, database, or a server side script.

2. Old fashion - I don't know how old you are, but when I was in school we didn't have fancy graphics, PCs, and in most case we didn't event have terminals. If you wanted a graph you did it with characters printed on paper. Use the Report object to create a graph this way.

3. PDF content markup operators - These are the operators used in every PDF to create the page content you see on the screen. They are very powerful and can be used to create literally any kind of graphic. Of course you have to know what they are and how to use them. From JavaScript you can use them in an undocumented (and unsupported) function to create a button icon. For an example take a look at this PDF application.

[url=http://www.windjack.com/Downloads/MatrixOperations.pdf]http://www.windjack.com/Downloads/MatrixOperations.pdf[/url]

Knowing a little vector geometry helps as well.

Thom Parker
WindJack Solutions
[url=http://www.windjack.com]www.windjack.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/acrobat/sdk/
pdf/javascript/AcroJS.pdf]Acrobat JavaScript Reference[/url]

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
www.pdfscripting.com
Very Important - How to Debug Your Script