Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 34476
Bar Chart x-axis labels are badly formatted per default
Last modified: 2013-02-24 21:22:02 UTC
Column charts work reasonably effectively. If the chart is converted to a bar chart (i.e. bars are horizontal, the bar labels are very badly formatted). In many cases, they do not show up. The problem is that the area occupied by the bars squeezes out the area for the bar labels. An example is seen in tab1 in the spreadsheet found at the URL.
Created attachment 17850 [details] zipped open office file
Set Prio to an realistic value.
hello Jciconsult, I was able to confirm this error. I made a few of my own charts entering random row labels as well as working with small and large numbers. I changed how much data was in the field as well. Usaully at around 10 different enteries into the chart the formatting becomes horrible. I did find something interesting though. If you click "show text elements in preview" as you are creating the chart, the labels look much better in the preview than in the final chart. Changeing the size of the chart also does not help, usualy just makes text larger instead of allowing more room for it to all fit. Not being able to properly lable chats will make them practically useless for end-user application. Error was replicated on Windows 2000 OS with 2.8 Ghz P4 and 1 gig Ram OO build 1.1.2. -Adam
I have been evaluating open office for business use. Bar charts are one of the key presentation tools that most business types like. One of my major criticims about open office is that there are lots of cute but not necessary gee whiz features but standard usability requirements for business work, such as bomb proof standard charts, has not been well tested. I will document one or two of those when I have time but I am going to end up reporting that the package is not ready for business use yet.
I have confirmed this bug on both Windows and Linux platforms. It happens whenever creating a chart, but it can be fixed by double clicking the chart, and moving the actual graph itself within the space allocated for the chart originally. Still, the chart should definitly not start out badly formatted.
When you create a bar-chart (horizntal bars) from scratch, the labels are not shifted out of the visible area, but they are cropped. This is becuase the option "Break Labels" is checked. When you uncheck this, you get readable labels. (Select in Menu: Format/Axis/X-Axis..., go to tab "Label" and uncheck "Break") The chart in your example has the option "Stagger odd" set for labels (same tabpage as mentioned before). There is a bug, that the shifting out of every second label is not taken into account when the space needed is calculated. To avoid this, you can select "Tile" or "Automatic". If you still want the staggering, you have to switch it off first, and then resize the diagram, such that there is some whitespace on the left, and then reset the staggering option. Sorry for the inconveniences. The effort of re-implementing a new chart-engine is still in progress, and we will improve this behaviour there.
Thanks for all the advice, I was able to get decent charts. The ability to size the chart to adjust for labels would be very useful. It is there but does not work very well. Specifically, with the default sizing options, when I click on the bar chart, I see sizing rectangles only in the middle of the top and bottom of the chart. In most bar charts, the sizing rectangles at the corners are outsize the plot area by default. If I mess the sizing using the size dialog, I can get a "handle" on them. Then it is possible to adjust bar charts to look more useful. I should emphasize that as a consultant simple features such as bar charts are used 10x more often than more sophisticated charting options.
In case of the effort of re-implementing the new chart-engine is still in progress => target OOo Later
accepted
iha->bm: I'll take this issue.
This is fixed with the re-implementation of the chart module in CWS chart2mst3. Look at the Ole Object 'Object 1' in the attached document. The category axis labels now get enough space.
->Thomas, please verify.
verified
Verified in MWS 680 m215, closing.