Libraries for pretty charts in SWT?

Martin Klinke picture Martin Klinke · Aug 22, 2008 · Viewed 16k times · Source

I know the following libraries for drawing charts in an SWT/Eclipse RCP application:

Which other libraries are there for drawing pretty charts with SWT? Or charts in Java generally? After all, you can always display an image...

Answer

Ryan P picture Ryan P · Sep 4, 2008

I have not used BIRT or JGraph, however I use JFreeChart in my SWT application. I have found the best way to use JFreeChart in SWT is by making a composite an AWT frame and using the AWT functionality for JFreeChart. The way to do this is by creating a composite

Composite comp = new Composite(parent, SWT.NONE | SWT.EMBEDDED);
Frame frame = SWT_AWT.new_Frame(comp);
JFreeChart chart = createChart();
ChartPanel chartPanel = new ChartPanel(chart);
frame.add(chartPanel);

There are several problems in regards to implementations across different platforms as well as the SWT code in it is very poor (in its defense Mr. Gilbert does not know SWT well and it is made for AWT). My two biggest problems are as AWT events bubble up through SWT there are some erroneous events fired and due to wrapping the AWT frame JFreeChart becomes substantially slower.

@zvikico

The idea of putting the chart into a web page is probably not a great way to go. There are a few problems first being how Eclipse handles integrating the web browser on different platforms is inconsistent. Also from my understanding of a few graphing packages for the web they are server side requiring that setup, also many companies including mine use proxy servers and sometimes this creates issues with the Eclipse web browsing.