A table chart formats chart input information into a table that displays data series as vertical columns of data. The columns are arranged so that corresponding label and value elements are laid next to each other to form table rows. Above the category labels and series values the table reserves space for series names and axis titles. Finally, all table components may be decorated with various visual formatting effects like cell border lines and different colored backgrounds. In fact, table charts support most chart visualization attributes, with the notable expection of 3D -related attributes that are not supported at all.
Table charts are a new feature in Chart version 4, and they introduce some completely new output format features to the chart visualization framework. In particular, table chart output is either HTML or XSL-FO markup text, decorated with CSS2 -compatible style attributes. The resulting rich HTML markup can be directly viewed with any CSS2 -compatible HTML browser, while the XSL-FO output may be embedded in any XSL-FO compatible content, and be refined for example to PDF with some appropriate post-processing.
Table charts accept and visualize any chart data. In particular, table charts can be used together with any other chart type to provide a full text record of the data other charts visualize in some graphical form.
Table charts expect zero or one label channels, and any number of value channels. Label channel content, if present, will be displayed in the first (or last) table column, while all missing label information is replaced with a running row index counter. Each value channel will be displayed in it's own table column, in the order (or reversed order) they appear in chart data source. Structured values like those used by scatter or OHLC charts will be broken into sub-columns. Finally, grouped data as accepted by combo charts will be distributed into several separate tables, one table for each combination chart sub-chart.
Due to the somewhat unique nature of table charts, these charts exhibit certain behaviour characteristics that are not typical to any other chart types. In particular, table charts obey and implement certain visual effects other chars do not (yet) support, or that they support in somewhat different form. The most significant of these special chart visual features are:
The fact that table charts use Cascading Style Sheet 2 (CSS2) properties to express style information restricts also what kind of style information can be used in table charts:
Table row background color is controlled by plot area background color. In particular, unlike other charts, table charts support cyclic palette colors as plot area background colors. For example, with a white,gray plot backPaint palette color, the background of all first row cells will be white, the second row will be gray, the third wil again be white, and so on. With series backPaint and X -axis backPaint, it is possible to control the background color of each data and label column separately.
The string representations of table chart cell values can be explicitly controlled with series dataFormat attribute. The formatting rules and syntax are identical to the corresponding data source dataFormat, as for example in inline XML data column dataFormat. However, while data sources use the given format to interprete strings as data values, series dataFormat tells how those data values are formatted back to strings.
Table chart grid, axis, and border lines mimic the behaviour of corresponding lines in other charts, but because of the unique nature of table charts, there are certain differences. In particular, table chart grid, axis, and border lines control the following details:
It is also worth noting that when axis position and direction are controlled with axis opposite and reversed attributes, the exact cell edges which each axis and grid line attribute controls change in appropriate ways.
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| One series table. |
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| Two series table. |
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| Two structured X,Y coordinate pair series table. |
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| Two sub-chart table. |