How to Ask a Question About JFreeChart - READ THIS!

[david.gilbert]

So you've got a question about JFreeChart...reading this and following the advice given will improve your chances of getting an answer. A lot.

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(0)  Ask yourself whether you even need to ask a question.  Did you: (a) look through the Javadocs?  (b) search the forum to see if a similar question has already been asked and answered?  (c) search the web (via your search engine of choice)?  Heck, you might even want to look through the JFreeChart source code - it's not just for the compiler to look at.

(1)  DON'T tell us your problem is URGENT.  Your deadlines, priorities and lack of resources are of no concern to us.  We have our own deadlines, priorities and lack of resources to deal with.  See also point (2).  And if you haven't read the JFreeChart Javadocs, searched the forum and searched the web, then DO NOT CONTINUE.  Go right back to step (0) and start again.

(2)  Remember that questions are answered by volunteers, not by paid support engineers.  If no-one answers your question, it could be just that no-one has any spare time right now.  Or it could be that you didn't ask your question the RIGHT WAY.

(3)  If you think you didn't ask your question the right way, add some more information in a follow-up post.  But DON'T start a new thread, just post the additional info on the same thread.

(4)  Choose a short but descriptive title for your post.  A post entitled "Help me please!!!" is less likely to attract someone's attention than "XYBarRenderer bug(?) in version 1.0.9".

(5)  State the version number of JFreeChart that you are using and, if you think it might be relevant, the operating system and JRE version you are using.  This information is important and, having got our attention with your question, you don't want to lose it again while we wait for you to tell us what version of JFreeChart you are using.

(6)  It is always a good idea to include a screen-shot in your post.  A picture really is worth a thousand words, especially since we're talking about charts.

(7)  If you are reporting something that you think is a bug, include a small, SELF-CONTAINED demo program that shows the problem.  Better still, write a JUnit test and post that.  If your code can't be compiled outside of your environment, it is almost worthless to us.

For an example of the RIGHT WAY to ask a question, see the following post:

http://www.jfree.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=24713

Get the idea?

[RichardWest]

A note to new forum members:

As a spam prevention mechanism, the JFreeChart forum does not allow new members to post images and URLs. We appreciate that this makes it hard to follow the advice in this thread. There are a couple options to overcome this impediment. Like the spam bots, you too can be creative with your URLs:
* drop the 'http://' if your URL does not begin with 'www'
* spell the URL phonetically (e.g. www dot jfree dot org)
* countless others
Another option is to follow the advice in step 3 and post the URL and/or images in a follow up post.

There is no need to comment or appologize about this in your post. The former because we aware of these restrictions since it is the forum's policy. The latter for the same reason and is not within your control. However, if you do comment or appologize, you should really appologize for not reading this post first.

A note about posting images:

The JFreeChart forum does not upload or host images. If you wish to use an image in your post, please host it on a publicly accessable server and provide a URL to the image in an img tag. There are several free image hosting sites on the web. The most common used by JFreeChart forum members is ImageShack (not intended as an endorsement), but a Google search yeilds several other options.

Always use code tags for code:

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Posting a large amount of code without code tags makes code unreadable. Unreadable code will likely mean your post will be ignored. The moderators reserve the right to edit posts to insert code tags if they are feeling magnanimous.