wxFreeChart: Flexible, cross-platform chart app

You say you’re tired of the same old graphs and charts? Russian developer Andrey Valerievich Moskvichev has some intriguing software for you. The powerful and flexible wxFreeChart application can draw curve, OHLC, Gantt, and pie charts, and histograms.

wxFreeChart is an all-in-one charting solution based on wxWidgets, the cross-platform C++ development library. It’s part of the wxCode project, which also comprises, among others, the wxPlotCtrl, wxMathPlot, and wxPlPlot libraries for wxWidgets.

wxFreeChart designed to be easy to use and to be as flexible as possible. You can create many different chart configurations, with many visual options, with minimal coding. wxFreeChart uses a model-view-controller (MVC) approach, which means you can get chart data from many different sources. It also lets you draw realtime dynamic charts. The best way to learn about its many features, Moskvichev says, is to read the wxFreeChart sample code. “It was written to be easy to understand, with many comments.”

wxFreeChart was born two years ago when Moskvichev needed charts for his own proprietary projects, but he soon decided to make wxFreeChart open source. He develops the software using Eclipse and mingw on Windows and gcc on Linux. “I chose them because they are open, free, and high quality,” he says. He hosts on SourceForge.net because “SourceForge is the largest and most famous open source network, with many advanced features for developers. To let people know about the software I put wxFreeChart on freshmeat.net and also send messages to developers’ forums and groups.”

Moskvichev releases updates to the code almost weekly. Upcoming versions are expected to add features such as logarithmic axes, interval axes, chart zoom and pan, and data markers. He is also implementing support for mouse events on user click and motion on chart elements. And he’s working on porting wxFreeChart to wxWinCE, so it will work on handheld devices.

Overwhelmed by your research? Turn to Piggydb

Sometimes you can be overwhelmed by the amount and variety of information you uncover when you’re researching a project or a report. Using software to organize your information can help. At first glance, the web application Piggydb seems like a hybrid between a blog and a notebook application like Evernote that allows you to save information. But Piggydb puts its focus on the process of organizing information, which makes it what you might call an idea processor.

Piggydb does not aim to be an input-and-search database, but rather a platform that encourages users to organize their knowledge continuously to discover new ideas or concepts. The project’s Why Piggydb page explains what it’s best suited for in more detail.

Piggydb is the brainchild of Japanese developer Daisuke Morita, who created it because he needed a tool that did what Piggydb does. The software is written in Java, because, Morita says, it’s easy to package a web application with Java. He uses Eclipse and other standard tools for Java development. The software has been under constant development since before its first official release almost a year and a half ago, with new releases coming monthly or even weekly.

Piggydb works best when you use it to build knowledge from the bottom up by accumulating knowledge fragments. It provides two kinds of view for knowledge fragments: flat and tree. Once you create your structure, the software will limit your ability to create new views or make new connections, so it is important to look for other relations between the fragments in the flat view.

Morita says some of the features planned for future versions include:

- Optional anonymous access
- External authentication support (such as LDAP)
- Chinese version (currently English and Japanese are supported)
- Plug-in API
- User-assigned tags and relations

Morita welcomes help with testing the project in a multi-user environment. E-mail or tweet him and he’ll create an account for you.

GGC is a sweet open source diabetes management app

When you receive a diagnosis of diabetes, it’s the beginning of new chapter in your life that involves continual monitoring of your blood sugar. Software can help you manage that task. GNU Gluco Control (GGC) is one free, open source option.

A programmer named Dieter created GGC in 2001 or so, but Slovenian developer Andy Rozman joined the project in 2004 and took it over. “At the time,” Rozman says, “I was looking around for diabetes software, but each application had its own problems. (Now we have a lot more to choose from, and most solutions are quite adequate.) I am a Java programmer, so I was looking mostly for Java solutions. When I first time saw GGC I was not impressed with it. It was crude with almost no functionality, but I decided it was the one I could help develop.”

Rozman used Visual SlickEdit for a while to work on the Java code, until about year and half ago, when the project made its first official release. “Fellow developer Reini and I started thinking that now that we were ‘out,’ more people will try to use it and help us, so we need to write documentation on how anybody can help. Our first step was selection of an official tool that could be used by anyone. Reini had used Eclipse for a few months at that time and he promoted it to me. Eclipse is now official development environment for GGC.”

The project promotes the software on diabetes web sites and forums. “Whenever I find any new forum or web site that covers diabetes software, I send mail and ask people there to add it,” Rozman says.

GGC maintains food and meals databases; the one from the USDA is imported, and users can build their own. “We support many diabetes devices: we support about 25 different glucose meters from five different companies, and we currently support one pump, and two more are in works. We are trying to add more devices, and also work on tools. For instance, we have a so-called Bolus Helper, which helps determine how much insulin must be injected. This is the function I use the most, since my pump doesn’t have this integrated.

“We have a lot of features planned for future: Extensions to the pump tool with new devices, adding a continuous glucose monitoring system (CGMS) tool with basic support for CGMS devices, a database tool (GGC supports many (almost all) JDBC-supported databases, but currently we don’t have automatic install of tables and initial data to user -selected databases), new graphs for all features, possibility of online upgrade, appointments, stocks, and many many more.”

Rozman says he welcomes help with programing, ideas, translations, and testing – “everything. We have some developers who drop by and do some stuff and then take their leave. Some stay for a longer time, but not many, so most of work is still on my shoulders.”