Marcia,

Thanks. Your white paper was already on my screen when you replied just now. :)

I am reading your reply and the others right now, and trying, for now, to come up with the 'quick and dirty' easiest to implement. So far I am liking the idea of the OWC method and Rick Strahl's class. I like the idea that it will create a gif which I can then embed in an frx. For me it's not necessarily what's most powerful, but what I can implement quickly given my skills. Since I know the VFP report writer reasonably well this method seems appealing. It seems like less of a learning curve than MSChart or MSGraph.

I am thinking that OLE automation gives me the most flexibility and power, but I just remember spending so much time several years ago on a word automation project, wading through the object model, working through lots of quirky issues. And I do remember that it was slow.

One consideration, though, is that although they haven't asked for it yet, I'm anticipating that down the road the users might want 'their original spreadsheet back'. Meaning that they might want to play with the output on their own. If that's the case, then I'm thinking that in the long run I have to use OLE Automation anyway?


Your article was written in 2002. Are the options fundamentally the same now? Or are there other issues or new implementations to consider?



>I am looking for recommendations on both the EASIEST and the most POWERFUL way to create chart / graph output from VFP. Right now I don't care about the web. I need to display color 3D bar charts on the screen and print them.
>
>You may want to download the white papaer and code samples from the conference session I gave called "Creating Graphs in VFP" from the tools and utilities page of my web site. It may help you make a decision.