Features

This application is not like a Word processor in which you manage documents by saving and loading them from anywhere on your PC's hard drive. Instead this application has a "built in" chart database that contains all of your chart information.

The chart database is automatically loaded whenever you start the application. It is automatically saved whenever you exit the application or choose File|Save. The information stored for each chart is quite small so the chart database file will remain relatively small.

The chart library, the styles and the data sources are all stored together in a file called chartsys.dbs (which is short for chart system database). This is a specific file format (not a readable text file) understood only by the chart application - do not delete this file or try to edit it in any other application - it will become corrupted and you will lose your chart information.

If you have accidently edited the file in another application and the file has become corrupt then rename it to a different name and when the application starts it will create a new empty chart library. Your existing charts will be lost.

Separation of data and presentation

In traditional applications the presentation of data and the data itself are not separated: A word processor allows editing of the contents and the editing of the appearance of paragraphs in the same area of the application. If you want to make a change a set of documents so that they all have the same look and feel as each other you have to go through each one and edit it.

In more modern applications like this one the user is able to create a "chart style" that is not tied to a single set of chart data. In the creation of a chart you specify the data you want displayed and the style to be used.

In other words you can say "I have created a nice look and feel for my charts (call it a chart style) and I want to apply that design to many different charts rather than creating the separate charts and then changing the colors on each one to create the desired look and feel". The benefits of this approach can not be underestimated.

Let's say you have sets of data for each quarter of the financial year and you wanted to create a separate graph for each quarter and display the graphs in the same colors for each graph. Simply create a single chart style with the desired color scheme and animation styles and then create 4 charts that use that same style with different sets of data.