The Multiseries Chart Editor

This is the editor for the category chart, which we take as example for all the multi-series charts, reporting then the differences in the other editors.

The Settings Panel

In the Settings panel the Titles group of controls, the Vertical check box and the Colors group of controls is common to all bar and line chart editors.
Let's give a beter look to this panel:

In the Titles group of controls you can enter:

the title of the chart which, as seen for the pie chart, is on the top of the chart
the labels that describe the x and y axes of the chart

If the Vertical check box is checked that the x axis is horizontal and the y axis is vertical.
The opposite happens if it is unchecked.

In the Colors group of controls you can choose the colors for:

the background of the chart
the grid on the chart background (in the example xy line chart it is blue). If grid and background color are the same the grid does not show.
the color given to the bar or the line of each series. You can change the color of the series clicking on the ... button, which opens the series color dialog.

The Category group of controls is contained only in the category charts (line and bar). It is used to select the labels of the x axis that define categories, which are similar to the sections labels of a pie chart.
You can choose bween:

Texts: You select a 1-dimensional text matrix (vector) in the Texts field, using the matrix selection dialog. This matrix is used to populate the categories/labels for each point of the chart.
By prefix: if the categories are a lot you can just give a Prefix. For example, giving the prefix “Category”, the categories “Category0”, “Category1”, “Category2” ... are generated.

In both cases you have an additional parameter, called Step, which has the default value 1. Step is used to avoid that the chart shows too many categories (labels), becoming confused.
If Step has an integer value different from 1 the chart shows only the categories (labels) that have an index which is multiple of Step. For example, if we choose By Prefix, our Prefix is “Category” and the Step value is 10, only “Category0”, “Category10”, “Category20”... are showed.
Step does not have any influence to the chart values, which are independent from the category labels policy.

The Values Panel

The Values panel shows a list of the series displayed in the chart.
In the category editor the list has the columns:

Series Name used to identify the series in the chart legend
Values defined by a numerical 1-dimensional matrix (vector) containing the values of the series.
Type is the type of series (line, bar, area...)

The series can be added, updated, removed and moved up and down in the list (see the buttons).
To add a new series, you click on the Add button, which opens the Add Simple Data Dialog.

In the xy editor the list has the columns:

Name identifies the series in the chart legend
X and Y are the values that form the <x,y> points of the chart. Y has to be a 1-dimensional numerical matrix (vector), but X can be either a 1-dimensional numerical matrix (vector) or an interval with the same size of the Y vector.
Type is the type of series (line, bar, area...)

Here is an example of the xy series list:

The first row has two vectors as X and Y values; the second row has as X values an interval (-4 is the star, 1 is the step so that we have a sequence -4, -3, - 2...).
If both X and Y are matrices, they need to have the same size.
The series can be added, updated, removed and moved up and down in the list, using the buttons at the bottom of the list.
To add a new series click on the Add button at the bottom of the list. It opens the Add XY dialog.
Clicking on the Update button on the bottom of the values list you can change the selected series using the same kind the Add XY dialog.

In the time editor the list has the columns:

Name to identify the series in the chart legend
X, which are the times/dates values of the x axis
Y which are the numerical y values.
Type is the type of series (line, bar, area...)

Y has to be a 1-dimensional numerical matrix (vector), but X can be either a 1-dimensional date matrix (vector) or an interval with the same size of the Y vector, as we can see in the following example:

In the first row X is a date matrix and Y is a numerical matrix.
In the second row X is an interval from the 1^st March 2007 with step of 1 day, Y is a numerical matrix.
If both X and Y are matrices, they need to have the same size.

The series can be added, updated, removed and moved up and down in the list, using the buttons at the bottom of the list.
To add a new series click on the Add button at the bottom of the list, which opens the Add Time dialog.
Clicking on the Update button on the bottom of the values list you can change the selected series using the Add Time dialog.

The X axis

For the category charts, the categories are related to the entire chart; for the xy and time series the X and time values are related to each individual series.
This means that in the category charts the first point of each series is located at the start of the x axis, by the first category label.
Instead in the xy and time charts the series start is related to the location of their x/time values on the x axis, as you can see in the “xy” example.