* What is this package?

PyChart is a Python library for creating professional quality PS, PDF,
PNG, or SVG charts.  It supports line plots, bar plots, range-fill
plots, and pie charts.  Because it is based on Python, you can make
the full use of Python's scripting power.

The PyChart home page is at 
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Yasushi_Saito/pychart

* What you need

You need Python (http://www.python.org) version 2.2 or later.  You
also need Ghostscript (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/) to produce PNG
files. Pychart used to require Ghostscript during PS and PDF
generation to obtain font metric information, but that's no longer the
case.

* Platforms supported

In theory, PyChart works on any platform with Python.  In practice,
I've run PyChart on Linux, Win2000, and Jython/Win2000. Jython on
Windows platforms can't produce a legit PDF file to stdout; you need
to use "--output=foo" command-line option.

* Installation

If you have Python 1.6 or later (or have Python 1.5 with Distutils),
become a root and do:

	# python setup.py install

Otherwise, manually copy the "pychart" directory into the standard Python
library directory (usually /usr/lib/python1.5/pychart). Or, you can
set PYTHONPATH environment variable before you start Python. For
example (in bash):

% PYTHONPATH=~/PyChart-1.14/pychart python mumbo.py

* Documentation

A detailed documentation can be found in doc/html.

* Examples

All the *.py files in the demos/ directory can be run directly. For
example,

setenv PYTHONPATH ..
python linetest.py >foo.eps
gs foo.eps

or

setenv PYTHONPATH ..
setenv PYCHART_OPTIONS="format=pdf"
python linetest.py >foo.pdf
acroread foo.pdf

* Who is the author?

Yasushi Saito (ysaito@hpl.hp.com), a full-time researcher and
part-time hacker. This program is created mainly to serve my personal
needs to write pretty charts for my papers. As such, it is updated
only when I'm writing a paper, which happens about once every half
year or so.

Anyway, if you have comments, requests, or (even better)
fixes/enhancements, feel free to email me.

