Ok while im not as extreme in my views on free software as Richard Stallman I so like to use free libre open source software where possible. Not so much because im a tight arse (although that does factor in) but also because I like to ability to fix bugs or add features when I need them. Sure I have never had to do it before, but the thought that I could do it was always comforting. Well finally I needed to do such last night. I was playing with pChart which is a PHP charting library. I wanted to create a Pie Chart which would display not just the % of each slice
but also the actual value. Sadly it didnt support this functionality. So I opened the correct class in trusty Notepad++ and added two lines in the correct locations and everything is as I expected. Now I get the Pie chart I want.
Ahhh the beauty of Open Source software (where open is not just a look but dont touch affair AKA Free Sofware).
For those interested the lines in question are in pChart.class in the drawPieChart functions.
elseif ($DrawLabels == PIE_VALUE_LABEL)
$Caption = $Value." - ".$iLabels[$Key]."\r\n".
(round($Value * pow(10,$Decimals) * $SplicePercent)/pow(10,$Decimals))."%";
Published on Friday 15th January 2010
Comments (3)boyter
I like the idea of Free Software more then Open Source. Although the name isnt that good (probably why Open Source is used) as it implies you didnt pay for it which is not always the case.
But yes it is very nice when you can solve your own issues.
"Eternal life or your money back!" 
nisch
If you did the dashboard course, you would know how evil pie charts are and would know to avoid them where possible 
Newer
philderbeast
i must say i love the idea of open source as well... so much that I'm going to make my own open source control panel for webhosting since i cant find something that suits my needs since i moved on to the vps