Well, Jon, this discussion is only interesting if any of us is involved in
software development, so that anything useful we point out here will
become
helpful for the next generation of users.

I try to be helpful to non-developers who are using the applications now.

In response to your comment:

And I don't understand "[an axis] will pull everything attached to it in
the
same orientation".

What I meant is:

If what we call an AXIS can live up to its name, then all the items or
categories (as Excel calls it) attached to it, should keep their
relationship
to the axis regardless of what happens to it. If you turn the axis upside
down, items attached to it should turn upside down too. Just imagine the
front axis of a car and the items attached to it: tires, power steering,
brakes, transmission, etc. If the car gets into an accident and lands on
the
pavement upside down, all those mechanical parts should keep their
orientation to the front axis, unless is so terrible an accident that
everything falls apart (lol). This concept is so basic that I'm sure most
human beings have absolutely no problem understanding it and evoking it
whenever the proper clue is provided. Hence my remark about proper
phrasing.
Regarding "categories in reverse order", well I don't know. I certainly
don't
expect the tires to be right-side- up while the car is upsidedown. If we
had
to choose a better name, probably it would be "pivot chart" or "pivot
plot",
especially if there pivot tables have already been invented.

Okay, an axis in Excel has a scale. This scale includes min, max, order to
display, and where the corresponding orthogonal axis crosses. If I have a
category axis, and the categories start at the crossing axis with A then
continue to B and C, I can reverse the order of the axis, and now it starts
at the other end with the crossing axis, and A, B, C in the opposite order.

I don't see how this varies from your description of a car's axle when you
roll into the ditch. Granted, some of the terminology in the dialogs is not
100% clear; they tried improving it in 2007, and some improved and others
regressed. The nice thing with software like Excel, is that you can look at
something, say "I wonder what that does", and try it. If it does something
you like, you have a good chance of remembering at least that you can do
something cool, and maybe even remembering how. If it doesn't do something
you like, you can undo it.

- Jon
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Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. - http://PeltierTech.com
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