Data scope mismatch in chart

[John Harrison]

I have a problem I can't find a way round. I'm trying to plot data
against month for various years. The source array has month at the top
and year down the left. If I select the whole area, select: Line >
'Rows', 'Category (X) labels' and 'Series labels' it does what I would
expect, plots graphs with month on the X axis and each series labelled
with the year in the legend. But ...

The data for 1998 - 2016 dominate the graph with a misleading pattern.
(The quarterly source data is split evenly across the relevant months,
which was adequate for the yearly picture but mainly noise when trying to
see the monthly pattern). So I want to ignore that and plot the true
monthly data from 2017 onwards.

Ideally I would be able to delete the unwanted series from the chart, but
AFIA Fireworkz can't do that so I created the chart in two stages, first
an empty one to get the axes, then adding the relevant block of data.
I've done this before and it worked, but not now.

I created an empty chart based on just the header row (containing months
and the preceding year cell) with the same settings as abov. That creates
a chart with the correct X axis (labelled Jan - December). So far so good
- although the legend refers to a series 'S1' despite no data being
selected for it, and nothing is plotted.

Then I select the data in the rows for 2017 onwards (including the year
column) and use Extra > Chart > Add, which adds it to the chart, but
incorrectly.

The year is treated as the first data value (massive spike plotted in
January) and the X axis is extended by one unit with the addition of '13'
(I assume because there are already 12 months). And instead of the legend
referring to years the series are labelled: S1, S2, S3, ... etc.

I would expect the 'Use first value as series label' setting to be applied
to the added data but it obviously isn't.

Any idea why? Or more to the point how to make it do the right thing?

Regards

--
John Harrison
Website http://jaharrison.me.uk
Using 4té and ARMX6, both running RISC OS

[Harriet Bazley]

On 26 Aug 2022 as I do recall,

John Harrison wrote:

> I have a problem I can't find a way round. I'm trying to plot data
> against month for various years. The source array has month at the top
> and year down the left. If I select the whole area, select: Line >
> 'Rows', 'Category (X) labels' and 'Series labels' it does what I would
> expect, plots graphs with month on the X axis and each series labelled
> with the year in the legend.

[snip]

> Any idea why? Or more to the point how to make it do the right thing?
>

My immediate thought would be to try PipeDream, which has (or always
used to have) a much more flexible and powerful chart package than
Fireworkz, and which definitely does let you select and delete
individual series, or add data from non-contiguous rows in multiple
operations....

Of course you may well need to paste the relevant chart back into a live
Fireworkz document. :-(


--
Harriet Bazley == Loyaulte me lie ==

Strategic withdrawal - running away with dignity!