Publish / report · All operations

Render a chart to a file

A variant of Make a report

Draw the rows as a bar, line or other chart and save it as an image or report part.

Status

In arcform

Not built yet

arcform does not do this yet; it would live in Brightfield's view. Its place on the roadmap

What other tools call it

Meridian's classification; an independent blind rating agreed on 95.7% of 324 rows (variant, version 3).

Alteryx Designer (1)
  • Interactive Chartread 2026-09-27

    Build interactive multi-layer bar, line, scatter and pie charts as report snippets

Talend (2)
  • tBarChartread 2026-09-27

    Render the input rows as a bar chart in a PNG image file

  • tLineChartread 2026-09-27

    Render the input rows as a line chart in a PNG image file

VisiData (1)
  • svg (saver)read 2026-09-23

    Save as a graph canvas as SVG

Background

A chart is a graphical representation of data in which the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart or lines in a line chart.[1] Charts can usually be read more quickly than the raw data, and can be created by hand or by computer using a charting application.[1] In ggplot2, the ggsave() function saves a plot to a file and guesses the type of graphics device from the filename extension.[2]

When to use it

Data that represents numbers changing over a period of time might be best shown as a line chart.[1] Percentages in different groups are often displayed in a pie chart, but may be more easily understood as a horizontal bar chart.[1] Choose the chart from the shape of the question, a change over time or a comparison between groups, before choosing its colours. (Meridian's view)

Talend's tBarChart component reads three fixed columns, series, category and value, and data in any extra column is not presented in the bar chart.[3] Talend's tBarChart creates a 3D image with each category's series stacked by default; clearing its 3Dimensions option gives a 2D chart with bars side by side.[3] In Alteryx Designer's Interactive Chart tool, a stacked bar chart shows how subgroups of data contribute to the total.[4] Turn stacking off when the reader is meant to compare the series with each other rather than read their total. (Meridian's view) By default, ggplot2's ggsave() function will not save images larger than 50x50 inches, to prevent the common error of specifying dimensions in pixels.[2]

Alteryx Designer's Interactive Chart tool can batch a chart, creating multiple charts from a single chart definition, one for each group of the columns chosen to group by.[4]

The method

Leland Wilkinson's 1999 book on statistical graphics, The Grammar of Graphics, served as the foundation for the R package ggplot2.[5] ggplot2 is a system for declaratively creating graphics: the user provides the data and says how to map variables to aesthetics and which graphical primitives to use.[6] In ggplot2, a plot usually starts from a dataset and an aesthetic mapping, and layers, scales, faceting specifications and coordinate systems are added to it.[6]

Vector graphics create images directly from geometric shapes such as points, lines, curves and polygons, while a raster image is a rectangular grid of pixels.[7][8] The World Wide Web Consortium standard for vector graphics is Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).[7] Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is a raster-graphics file format that supports lossless data compression.[9] In Matplotlib, savefig() infers the file format from the filename's extension when no format is set, and the available output formats depend on the backend being used.[10]

Compared with the alternatives

In KNIME report templates, SVG graphics stay sharp when zoomed and keep their text labels searchable, while PNG images can be smaller and render faster with many data points.[11] Save a vector image when the chart will be printed or zoomed, and a raster image when it plots many thousands of points. (Meridian's view) In Alteryx Designer, the Render tool's Use static chart option chooses between a static and an interactive chart, and is available only for temporary HTML or Composer output.[12] Save a static image when the chart travels by email or into a slide; keep it interactive when the reader will explore it. (Meridian's view)

Sources

  1. [1]Chart - Wikipediasecondary source
  2. [2]Save a ggplot (or other grid object) with sensible defaults — ggsave • ggplot2documentation
  3. [3]tBarChart | Talend Components for Jobs Helpdocumentation
  4. [4]Interactive Chart Tooldocumentation
  5. [5]Leland Wilkinson - Wikipediasecondary source
  6. [6]Create Elegant Data Visualisations Using the Grammar of Graphics • ggplot2documentation
  7. [7]Vector graphics - Wikipediasecondary source
  8. [8]Raster graphics - Wikipediasecondary source
  9. [9]PNG - Wikipediasecondary source
  10. [10]matplotlib.pyplot.savefig — Matplotlib 3.11.2 documentationdocumentation
  11. [11]Report Template Creatordocumentation
  12. [12]Render Tooldocumentation