Release Notes

This file contains info about the version of Graphityä you are currently using.

This is a beta version of Graphityä, please report bugs and other action request to Xanthus by email, fax or regular mail.

Xanthus International AB
mail:	P.O. Box 20161
	S-161 02 Bromma
	SWEDEN
phone:	+46-8-635 30 00
fax:	+46-8-98 70 67
email:	graphity@xanthus.se

What is Graphityä?

Graphityä from Xanthus is a brand new business graphics application for NEXTSTEP that can be used as a stand-alone application or together with the Questorä spreadsheet application from Xanthus.

Graphityä includes a number of powerful features:

·	3D graphs based on Renderman.

·	A powerful API that allows other apps to easily control and send data to Graphity.

·	"Hot-links" to the spreadsheet application Questorä (like Presentation Builder and Lotus Improv).

·	Full support for user palettes. Users can easily create new palettes with customized graphs and graphics. 

·	Drawing tools that allows you to draw directly on a graph sheet.

·	Images and sound can be drag-and-dropped anywhere on a graph sheet to create stunning documents including external graphics and sound effects.

· 	Unlimited undo. All commands can be undone and the number of undos are user defined.

·	The following 2D graph types are supported: bar, stacked bar, line, combination, stock, area, stacked area, scatter (x,y-plot) and pie.

·	The following 3D graph types are supported: bar, area scatter and pie.

·	Multiple light-sources for 3D graphs that can be positioned individually.

·	User defined shaders and textures for 3D graphs.

Graphity is not a port from another computing environment and has a true, well designed NEXTSTEP user interface including:

·	Smooth scrolling of documents. 

·	Direct manipulation of all objects on a graph sheet.

·	Use of the Color Panel and Font Panel for editing graphs. You can set the color of any component of a graph by color dropping. 

·	Inspectors for all graph types.

·	Drag-and-drop from the Workspace or from the ToolBox in Graphity.

·	Object linking fully supported.

How to Use Graphity

There is a number of demo documents delivered with this beta version of Graphity. Each document exemplifies a number of features of Graphity.

The demo documents can be found in the Info Panel.

Below is a description of the basic concepts of Graphity.

A Graphity Document

A Graphity document is just like a drawing document. It is called a graph sheet and consists of one or more pages on which you can put graph objects, graphics, text-fields, images and sounds. Usually you drag objects from the ToolBox into your graph sheet, but you can also use Workspace dragging or just copy/paste from other apps.

How to Create a Graph

There are six basic ways of creating a graph object in Graphity:

1.	Drag a graph object from the ToolBox to a graph sheet.

2.	Choose New Graph Link in the Menu Graph Links in the Questor spreadsheet application from Xanthus. This will create a new graph sheet in Graphity and use the data of the selected cells in the current Questor worksheet to create a graph object. The graph object will be linked to the data in Questor: When the data changes in Questor, the graph will be updated in Graphity.

3.	Select tabulated data in a word processor or another spreadsheet application and choose Display As Graph in the Graphity menu in Services.

4.	Select tabular data in a word processor or another spreadsheet application, copy it and paste it into a graph sheet. Answer Paste As Graph in the panel that appears.

5.	Drag a text file from Workspace into a graph sheet and choose Import As Graph in the panel that appears.

6.	Choose Import in the menu Document.

To edit the data of a graph, use the Data Series aspect of the graph inspector.

Note: If the graph is linked to data in Questor, a change in the original data will override the changes made in the graph inspector.

The ToolBox

The ToolBox includes a number of palettes, drawing tools and image and sound libraries. At the top of the ToolBox you will find the tool-bar where you select the tool you want to use.

The Inspector

The Inspector is used to change properties of selected graphs or other objects. The Inspector is divided into different aspects. At the top of the Inspector you will find the scrollable aspect-bar where you select the aspect you want to inspect. Depending on the object that is inspected, the aspect-bar will have a different appearance. Aspects with a gray cross are disabled for that object.

To the right of the aspect-bar are two buttons: The upper button ("inspect document") will inspect the current graph sheet and the lower button ("inspect previous") will inspect the object that was inspected before the current object.

Color Dropping

Graphity fully supports color dropping to set the color of various objects. Try to drop colors on graphs (bars, lines, background, grid, shadow, labels etc),  graphics (oval, rectangle etc) and on text fields.

Hint: To set the color of all labels on an axis, drop the color between two labels.

Undo/Redo

Graphity supports multi-level undo and redo. You can set the number of operations that will be stored in the undo-chain in the Preferences Panel. Undo (Command-z) and Redo (Command-Z) can be found in the menu Edit.

Object Linking

Drag an image, sound or text file from the Workspace to a graph sheet. You can then select if you want to import or link to the source document.

You can also use the Link menu in the menu Edit.

Note: If you want to copy a graph in Graphity and link it into another app, you must use the Copy As TIFF or the Copy As EPS command in Graphity. Continuous updating of links from Graphity is not bug-free in this beta version.

The Graphity API

Graphity has a powerful API to allow communication with the outside world.

·	Other NEXTSTEP apps can control and send data to Graphity via Speaker/Listener or Distributed Objects.

The folder API includes four small apps that illustrates the Graphity API.

Speed Issues

If you want to increase the user interface speed of Graphity there are some easy ways of doing that:

·	Set the Use Outline Dragging switch in the Selection Preferences. This will make dragging of objects on the graph sheet much faster.

·	For 3D graphs: Choose Disable 3D in the menu Tools to avoid slow redrawing of 3D graphs when editing other graphics on a graph sheet.

Printing 3D Graphs

When you are editing 3D graphs in Graphity, you will not see things on the screen exactly as they will be printed. This would be too slow.

Note: Shaders and textures will only be visible when printed. They will not be visible on the screen.

If you print a graph sheet that includes 3D graphs, a Render Panel will appear. Specify the resolution you want. (72 dpi is recommended).

The rendering might take some time. A standard 3D graph in 72 dpi will take about 3 minutes to render on a 25 MHz '040 NeXT.