It’s that time of year again – time to finalize our 2020 desktop charting/mapping roadmap (WinForms & WPF). To help us deliver the best possible features – features that address your business needs effectively, please take a moment to review the list below and share your thoughts/opinions with us. We expect to publish our official roadmap in January 2020.
2019 – Tell Us How We Did
Before we proceed to 2020, please consider the features we released in 2019 and tell us which of the following you are using in production code.
2020 Plans – Desktop Charts
Large Data Source Processing
We expect to introduce a new data processing mode to minimize memory footprint when processing large data sources. This will address the needs of those with extremely large statistical/financial datasets (especially useful for those using multiple Series or multiple Chart Controls simultaneously).
Runtime Customization
Based on our recent survey, most of you enable our runtime Chart Designer within your application (the Chart Designer allows end-users to quickly customize existing chart layouts or create new charts from scratch).
We want to extend the capabilities of our Chart Designer to address various usage scenarios, including:
- Modify the Chart Control layout from a predefined gallery
- Enable in-place edit mode for annotations and other text elements
- Introduce new data processing options within the Chart Designer (Calculated Fields, Parameters)
- Display a Mini Map for easy navigation
- Support percent values for Side Margins
New DateTime Scale Mode
Our Chart Control includes a configurable DateTime scale (you can exclude non-working days and time as needed). Based on support traffic and feedback, we will add a DateTime scale processing option where intervals without data are automatically excluded. This will simplify DateTime scale configuration for those using financial charts.
New Visualizations
As you know, our Desktop Chart Controls (WinForms & WPF) ship with a comprehensive set of Series views – views that address a variety of usage scenarios.
Over the years, we’ve been asked to introduce new data visualization options, such as Sankey Chart, Heat Map Chart or Surface Chart. If you like/need any of these visualizations, please detail your requirements below.
2020 Plans - Desktop Maps
New Vector Data Providers
We hope to introduce new data providers for formats such as vector tiles (PBF, MBTiles), GeoJSON, KMZ and GPX.
Vector tiles have a big advantage over raster maps from existing providers (Bing, OSM) because they reduce data transfer size. In addition, vector tiles make it possible to address popular requests such as map rotation.
Vector Element Layout
We want to add new options to extend the capabilities of certain Vector items such as Pushpins or Custom Elements. Specifically, we see a demand for rotation angle and SVG image support.
Map Editor UI
We hope to introduce new vector elements and extend the Map Editor UI to make it suitable for geo measurement and in-place editing.