Adding Inclusion of the Origin in BKGraphs
A developer and I were talking about the problem I was having with the second Y axis on the VantagePoint graphs, and he brought up another point: "On graphs", he said, "the origin is included and that tends to 'flatten out' the data so that it's not as rich in detail as it might be." Basically, if the range of the data on the y-axis was 1000 to 1100, the graph would include the y-axis origin and the graph would be smashed at the top. Not good.
I ran some tests, and I found that on my tests, the graph didn't include the origin. I asked him to send me data to verify, and he wrote back that the secondary Y axis data - minus the second Y axis, was fine. Here's a prime (but simple) example:
Sure enough, on a line graph, the y-axis origin is included. I was testing the scatter graph. So I dig into the docs and it seems that VantagePoint defaults this inclusion of the origin differently for different graphs. What I then did was to add the ability on the graph and the applet using the graph to force the inclusion of the origin for each axis independently... or not. Up to the user. So we end up with:
which is exactly what he wanted. Nice. Now there's the choice and that's going to lead to better looking graphs for the users.