On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, in microsoft.public.excel.charting,
ShaneDevenshire said:

We are now in 2008, Excel 97 came out in 1996, I don't expect many of us
have this version on our machines, there are just soooo..... many
enhancements since then.

I have Excel 97, and there isn't a graph available in 2003 or 2007 I
haven't been able to make so far. And there are some data graphics I can
do in 97 you can't do in 2007, like thematic maps (they eventually
removed the dog-in-a-manger app from Excel and now sell a standalone
Maps product).

Which is a bit of an indictment of Microsoft's development of Charting:
they should be offering dot plots and panel charts by now at the very
least, instead of messing with art department effects. A dot plot is
only to a Line Chart what a Bar Chart is to a Column chart, for heaven's
sake. In fact they should be offering all their category X axis chart
types in sideways form as a standard option, area charts as well.

Maybe they ought to think about a standalone graphing application they
can charge extra for? In an ideal world, the logical thing would be for
a third party company to develop such a product, but the MS giant has a
chilling effect: nobody wants to prove the market only to have MS say
"thanks, we'll take that now".

--
Del Cotter
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