reXume news

I’ve finally gotten around to making my Gantt chart software
available to others as either a product or an open-source-project
(haven’t decided which yet).

As with the reXume project (which uses GanttMagic to produce the
“experience charts”), there is lots of web-accessible documentation
to still to produce and the code published today is a first baby step.

GanttMagic produces a gantt chart (often misspelled as “gannt”)
given data in the GanttMagic XML format. (Here is the small
example data file that the test program mentioned below uses.)
It currently can produce the chart image in SVG, JPG, and PNG formats.
It is implemented in Java using the Apache Batik SVG library.

I have broken out and cleaned up my GanttMagic code and packaged it into
a JavaBean that includes all of the basic functionality, a standalone
application to use the bean via a command line, and a J2EE web application
to make the functionality available from any JSP/Servlet engine.

I have produced the following three varieties of WAR file for loading into
the appropriate J2EE servers. [Tested on Tomcat and JRun]
1) GanttMagic3.war – tested on Tomcat3.3 and JRun3.0 (both J2EE 1.2 compliant)
2) GanttMagic40.war – tested on Tomcat4.0 (J2EE 1.3 compliant)
3) GanttMagic41.war – tested on Tomcat4.1 (J2EE 1.3 compliant)

This code is running and available online at http://polyglotinc.dyndns.org/GanttMagic/
where is runs on my old Pentium II system with RedHat6.x and JRun3
(so don’t expect lightning speed).

I’ll add documentation soon, but for now, try using the test page
to experiment with. Choose which type of image you want (SVG,JPG,PNG) and hit
the “show me” button. The other controls are not interesting for now. JPG is
the most universal format. To see the SVG, you’ll need either a standalone viewer
or a browser plugin. I’ve heard new IE browsers may already have an SVG plugin
installed. Otherwise follow the links to install an SVG viewer browser plug-in
to see the raw SVG rendered. Without an SVG viewer, you can see the raw SVG
source which is just an XML text file.