<OT> Dumb OpenOffice calc/chart question of thee week

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Mon, 17 Jun 2002 22:29:28 +0200
Klaus-Peter Schrage <kpschrage at gmx.de> wrote:

> Am Montag, 17. Juni 2002 10:15 schrieb Roger Oberholtzer:
> 
> > I have looked everywhere and tried everything, but I have not seen how
> > to make a chart in OO Calc that contains two lines from two colums of
> > data that share the same X axis scale. The problem is that each column
> > does not have data for the same points along the X axis. If the X axis
> > was distance, one column would have data every meter and another every
> > 20 meters. I want each column as a separate line, sharing the same X
> > axis. Each column of data does have a column that defines it's X axis. I
> > can use only one of these to define the X axis.
> >
> > This seems like a very obvious thing that everyone would want. I could
> > not picture that the charting tool would not allow this. Anyone here an
> > OO chart expert?
> 
> I agree, this should be a very common task. I remember having tried to
> solve a similar problem some months ago - plotting together two animal
> growth curves measured at different times for each animal - with Excel,
> and I gave up in the end. Now looking at OO, I see that it's charting
> capabilities are not far beyond those of Excel. Perhaps we have to search
> for a software which is specialized in the task of graphing. Have you ever
> tried gnuplot? Unfortunately, I don't know much about it.

I am using gnuplot. I wanted to see if I could do the same in OO. Some of the
calcs I need to do are defined in excel functions (yuck!), which OO does seem
to support. So, my problem is with the charting limits. BTW, I would have
assumed that this was easy in excel. I surely have seen plots done so. Then
again, maybe they are done with a lookup/sort function that results in the 
data sharing a single column for the X axis. (All this from a guy who detests
the spreadsheet approach to data analysis. Give me SAS (which is available for
Linux - but a bit pricey with yearly licenses and all)! Maybe it is time to
look into updating our old Matlab Win32 license to a Linux one. I wonder 
if they do such as upgrades?

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