Bug 132308 - Chart Wizard / Scatter / field naming
Summary: Chart Wizard / Scatter / field naming
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Documentation (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
6.4.1.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on: 98543
Blocks: HelpGaps-NewFeatures
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Reported: 2020-04-21 19:17 UTC by Peter Gervai
Modified: 2020-04-21 22:43 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

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Description Peter Gervai 2020-04-21 19:17:41 UTC
I apologise for this bugreport.

I started with a problem, namely, I wanted to have a simple Scatter Chart with individual labeled points, and it didn't work. Figured out (withlots of community help) a method what worked, and went off to fix the related Help. Then I have realised that the Chart Wizard dialogs are inconsistent and the Help is structured so that it's almost impossible to fix without rewriting a lot of help pages. This is a call for some help as how to go on. 

Problems:

1. Chart Wizard for Scatter is not helping (Bug#98543 as an example). 

*Data Range* interpretation changes based on its size, it's content, whether series are in rows or columns (which is expected but not the way it behaves), and whether First row/col labels are checked (again, it's not behaving like one would expect). I have tried to document it but it seems to follow some really weird logic, and I cannot really formulate it. The problem is:

*Data Series* generated from *Data Range*, but the whole result of the process is puzzling. The amount and specifics of the generated series, the Name, X-Val and Y-val Data ranges and the Name and Data labels are generated almost randomly out from the *Data Range* set in the previous dialog window. I could document, probably how they are related, but it would need to list a lot of versions (even rows in range or odd? include only row labels or columns, too? row or column baased series? etc.). 

2. For Scatter (as it turned out later) there is "Data labels" field instead of "Category", however in the Far-Far-Away dialog of Chart/Insert>>Data Labels call them "Category" in its checkboxes. It turns out this switch is vital (see later) but canot be found since it has a different name. In the Help I can write that "Data labels" are actually "Categories", but, um, that's documenting a bug.

3. The Help is not structured this way. 
Right now there are generic Wizard pages (Chart Type, Data Range, Chart Elements), but no Chart Type specific description of the Wizard. This seems not to be a problem until I have realised that the data entered in the Wizard doesn't work, most prominently "Data Labels" will never be visible. 
It could be documented that these labels can be made visible in a rather convoluted way of steps:
- set up the chart
- edit the chart
- right click on a data point
- Select Insert data labels
- right click on a data point again
- Select Format Data Labels
- unselect "show value as number" and select "show category" instead
I am not sure this is the way it should be.

4. Showing Data labels could be achieved also by Chart/Insert>>insert Data labels. The dialog is buggy as well since it switches on data label as soon as it's opened, and switches also on "Show value" immediately, regardless of OK or Cancel. Apart from that it behaves the same as the aforementioned Format Data Labels menu, 


So, my problem is that I wanted to write documentation, but instead I listed various bugs relating to the Wizard and Chart menus. Also I could be wrong about the methods. Also I tried to be rather terse instead of describing various results of "Data Ranges" creating various "Data Series" content, with missing fields or weird series. 

Shall I try to document this? Shall I open various bugs about the mentioned issues? Would this issue would be useful instead? Please advise how can I be of help.

(Feel free to reassign this from Documentation to anywhere else, cut it, merge it or, if you insist, close it.)
Comment 1 Olivier Hallot 2020-04-21 22:43:08 UTC
Need to fix bug#98543

XY Scatter help page at

https://help.libreoffice.org/7.0/en-US/text/schart/01/type_xy.html

Note that the first column of the data range is always the category (X-axis). bug#98543 example shows that the category is counted and mapped in a X axis with numbering integers (0, 1, 2, 3 and with halves), instead of the textual value (One, Two, Three) of the cells.