CSV and XML data

To display a chart, you need to provide the data in a suitable form. There are two formats you can use: CSV and XML.

• CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is a very simple data format. You can easily build this by hand if you don't have too much information. Almost all programs that keep lists of data (such as MS Excel) can export them into CSV. You can edit a CSV file manually in your text editor. CSV data takes much less space and is processed faster. However, it can't have data point specific properties, as XML data can. Only the Pie & Donut chart has the same functionality in CSV as it does in XML.

• XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a more complicated data format. It can have all kinds of extra information, telling the software how to handle the data, for example:

<value xid="1" color="#FF0000">200</value>

This data point contains not only the value, but also a color attribute, which tells the chart to fill the column with a different color from the graph's default.