KChart as a standalone Application
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Chapter 3. KChart as a standalone Application

The previous chapter described the user interface, various configuration options, data editing and the wizard in detail.

This chapter gives real-life examples on how to use KChart in various situations as a standalone application. The purpose is to give you some understanding of the way KChart works and how various parts relate to each other.

Presenting Sales Figures

Warming up

This first example which might often be encountered in real life is presenting sales figures, or in this particular case profit.

Imagine you own a company that has three main categories of business: sales, support and training. And you would like to present the profit of these categories over some years. Making a graphical statistics is certainly a good idea. KChart can help you here.

Getting started

Run KChart and select the Blank Worksheeet.



Hit the button Use This Template to get started. KChart will present to you a completely empty document. That's good, we just need to enter some data and do some basic configuration to get a nice chart.



Getting the numbers in

The first step, and probably the most important, is to get the actual data into the chart. This can easily be done with the Data Editor. As usual you can get to the data editor by clicking on the icon in the toolbar.

You will notice that no data is present. Also note that the number of data rows and columns is set to a minimum, which is 1.

Now, just enter the data you see in the next screenshot. Note that you can increase the number of rows and columns with the spin boxes in the lower left corner. The names of the rows and columns themselves can be changed by clicking on them.



Simply click the OK button when you are done. This will present to you a simple bar chart.



Read on to do some fine tuning!

Fine Tuning

We will now do some fine tuning and put a title on the chart. And, we will add a nice 3D effect to the bars as well.

Start up the configuration dialog by clicking on the icon in the toolbar.

Title



Let's start with labeling. Go to the Header/Footer page and enter the text like in the above screenshot.

X-Axis Font Settings

The next step is to make the font of the x axis a bit bigger. You can do this on the Font page.



Choose the X-Axis item and click on the Font... button. Choose a somewhat larger font like in the following screenshot.



Note that the font size is set to Relative. This means that the font is automatically scaled according to the overall chart size. This is quite usefull and most of the time what the average user expects.

Giving it a 3D Look

Some types of charts like Bar and Pie have an additional configuration page.



To get a 3D effect for this type of chart, go to the Bar page and simply activate 3D bar.

That's all what we need for a reasonable looking chart. Note that much of this configuration could also have been achieved with the wizard. It's basically a matter of taste what you use. Experienced users will likely use the full option dialog we used in this example.

Simply accept the settings by clicking on the OK button.

Final output

The final chart will look like the next screenshot.



You might want to enlarge the application window to see the chart in full size. Note how the fonts get larger in relation to the chart size.

There are certainly aspects to improve further for your personal taste. For example try to make the title font even bigger. Just experiment further, this way you will get to know a lot of the KChart application.

Finally you can save the chart from the File menu and quit KChart with File->Quit

Exporting to Graphic Formats: SVG, PNG, JPG, chalk, Karbon14, Gimp and more

For further processing, the chart can also be exported as a graphics file. Many formats are available. Using either PNG, SVG, JPG or chalk will likely produce the best result.

To export your current chart simply choose File->Export... from the menu and select the desired file format from the filter box.

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