ChartDirector ActiveX - Anybody Tried ?

[Stephen Pardoe]

Hi,

I really like the activex charting component from advsofteng.com called chart director however when I try to implement it in FF OCX control with the OCX prog id, the 'default' control image is not displayed. Don't think that it was written in VB which as per FF docs could cause a problem.

Anybody had any success / experience with it at all ?

[Also, I have RMChart - I want to use chart director as it has a number of built in trading functions that I want to us...]

Thanks in advance,

Steve.

[Mark Strickland]

I have not used ChartDirector with PB or FF but I have used it with RealStudio in their Web Edition to draw graphs in a Web app.  If you have a need for complex and "pretty" graphs a few dozen lines of fairly simple code can make it happen.  For a desktop app the graph drawing is so fast you can create smooth animations (like muti bar graphs growing from zero to their full height) by simply putting the bar code value set in a loop and increment a value with a slight delay.

In RealStudio Web Edition I can refresh a graph without having to refresh the Web page.  The graph just "blinks" and it changes.  Because of Web latency you can't do smooth animations.

Pretty expensive but if you plan to do lots of graphs it is recommended.

[Stephen Pardoe]

I had a brain wave and wanted to run it by you guys to see if this would work:

FF PB main app (want to use WinLIFT - although I understand there may be some issues there to do with cWindow class from another post I saw by Patrice).
VB6 DLL (NOT activex, will use vbAdvance to export functions etc) that contains some functions and also a form housing ChartDirector.

What are the implications of doing this ? Trying to get an idea before I plunge headlong into it you see. The below info may help with your assessment:

a. I will need to use a VB6 DLL in any case as I need to use a JSON parser and I have VB6 code for that and I would like to leave that as it is.
b. Like I said before, ChartDirector is defo the choice option for me due to some built in mathematics.

So are there any issues with doing this ? Maybe chart events etc ?

Any and all help appreciated.

Regards. Steve.

[Paul Squires]

Hi Steve,

In this case, you need to use VB6 runtimes anyway for your JSON so you might as well use VB6 for the exe as well? Not sure how much of an advantage you'd gain by mixing PB and VB in this case. (I assume your VB6 DLL exports VB6 runtime code so you'd need to distribute the VB runtime DLL as well).

[Stephen Pardoe]

Paul,

Thanks for the response. Not overly bothered about distributing the runtime (or not as it is included with Windows) for VB6. The old 'bloatware' adage simply does not apply any more from my perspective - only the installation issues annoy me.

In terms of the PB and VB6 combination - I'm really thinking out loud here. The issue is that I have not been able to find a professional skinning engine for VB6 and WinLIFT is really good etc. The client wants a very stylised look and liked the look of the WinLIFT demos, so here I am...