Bug 168082 - Support variable-width column charts
Summary: Support variable-width column charts
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Chart (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Additional-Chart-Types
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Reported: 2025-08-23 21:17 UTC by Eyal Rozenberg
Modified: 2025-08-25 13:37 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
A simulated variable-width column chart in Excel (11.84 KB, image/png)
2025-08-23 21:18 UTC, Eyal Rozenberg
Details
Example of a variable-width column chart with labels on the columns (12.91 KB, image/jpeg)
2025-08-23 21:18 UTC, Eyal Rozenberg
Details

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Description Eyal Rozenberg 2025-08-23 21:17:14 UTC
At the moment, a column chart section carries numeric information only through one aspect: The column height (and, granted, some category information by its color).

Sometimes, we want to express _two_ numeric aspects for each item/element - which is not quite the same as expressing the same numeric aspect for two data series, so that a stacked column will not do.

Only few LibreOffice chart types offer this expressivity (e.g. X-Y scatter). For column charts to offer this, the natural aspect to use is the column _width_, which is currently always uniform.

MS Excel, apparently, already has support for variable-width column charts, and so should we.


Note: Variable-width stacked charts are a further complication, perhaps meriting its own bug since deciding how to define those is not completely straightforward. So, for now, let's just have non-stacked variable-width column charts.
Comment 1 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-08-23 21:18:20 UTC
Created attachment 202484 [details]
A simulated variable-width column chart in Excel
Comment 2 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-08-23 21:18:56 UTC
Created attachment 202485 [details]
Example of a variable-width column chart with labels on the columns
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2025-08-25 08:18:42 UTC
Please share an example sheet from MSO.
Comment 4 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-08-25 12:31:24 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3)
> Please share an example sheet from MSO.

Hmm, you got me there! I was 'taken' by the screenshot of what is supposedly a straight-up Excel chart. It turns out Excel doesn't support them directly; but you can achieve the effect by creating an area chart from a derivative table of your original data, as explained e.g. in this video tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEcShc1Nyeg

this can probably be done in LibreOffice too; but it would be better if it were supported directly.
Comment 5 Heiko Tietze 2025-08-25 13:37:59 UTC
+1 to feature parity with well-known tools (if Excel had this out of the box...)
0 to adding features without clear user need (more than "would be nice to have")
-1 to try making LibreOffice a "leading" statistics tool (advanced graphics are better handled where advanced data processing is done)