Review: DeltaGraph 5

Product Name: DeltaGraph 5.0.2
Company: Red Rock Software
URL: http://www.redrocksw.com/deltagraph/mac
Category: Spreadsheet / Charting software
Price: $299
Requirements: G3 or faster PowerMac, OS X 10.1.5
Rating: 3 bounces - Lustworthy

Publishers Red Rock Software tout DeltaGraph as the alternative to Microsoft Excel for displaying high-quality graphs of technical and statistical data both for on-screen display within the program and for export to page layout programs for inclusion on the printed page. Although not seen as a replacement to Excel for general purpose numerical and statistical analysis, they believe that DeltaGraph offers superior graphing when compared to Excel that should make it a useful tool for professionals who need to display scientific and technical data routinely. Users of Microsoft Excel will be familiar with its limitations as a source of decent graphics: most obviously in the basic format of the graphs it produces (300 dpi PICT files in the case of the Mac version of Excel). These files can be copied into Photoshop or Keynote, but the text is jagged and there is no true control of the colours used. If you paste an Excel graph into a drawing program like Illustrator or even AppleWorks and then ungroup the PICT so that you resize or manipulate the components such as the fonts or colours used, the results can be unpredictable, more often than not the graph explodes into a useless morass of shapes and words, as shown below.

Pasting an Excel graph into a graphics program isn’t reliable, with the PICT file prone to breaking up into useless components if it is ungrouped.

There are also limits to the ways Excel will display data, at least by using its in-built repertoire of graph styles. After all, Excel is aimed primarily at business users, the sorts of people who had used VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 in the past, and consequently it works most successfully for showing data that varies over fixed intervals of time (like profits or sales per month) or for managing what are essentially glorified lists (such as inventories and budgets). Excel becomes much less easy to use when you want to compare the relationships between two unevenly distributed variables, as is commonly the case in science (for example rate of photosynthesis against the intensity of light or a spindle diagram showing the number of species of fossil known from successive geological periods of time). Sometimes the solution is to use a different wizard from the one Excel recommends, at other times you need to introduce columns of dummy data to even out the spacing between irregular intervals and then make the dummy data invisible by playing with the lines and colour fills used. So while Excel might be an adequate solution for many business users, graphic designers, journalists, academics and students will often need to employ devious tricks to force Excel to plot data the way they need to, or else give up and create high-resolution charts by hand in a traditional drawing package.

Installation

I was supplied with DeltaGraph version 5.0 for review, which presented a couple of minor quirks during installation that need to be mentioned. One was that Classic needed to be switched off before the installer program would work properly; if this isn't done, it returns a vague message about errors and tells you to read the log for details. As is often the case, for the average user the logs are not even remotely helpful. A second issue was that the installer would only run on a Mac running OS X. Initially this didn't seem a problem, after all, DeltaGraph is an OS X application. But by downloading a free patch to take it to version 5.0.2, DeltaGraph becomes a hybrid application capable of running in OS 9 too, and all current versions of DeltaGraph from version 5.0.2 onwards include both OS 9 and OS X installers. So if you plan to install DeltaGraph on an OS 9 only Macintosh, be sure and check which version your retailer is supplying. Besides this facility, the currently shipping versions of DeltaGraph include a host of other enhancements such as direct importing of Microsoft Excel spreadsheet files.

Another niggle is the absence of a printed manual, though one can be purchased for an additional $45 from Red Rock Software should you wish to. This is an issue I find myself returning to again and again when reviewing software. DeltaGraph comes with only the briefest of leaflets describing the installation process, and instead all the real information on using the program is to be found in a 664 page PDF manual that comes on the CD. Such “electronic format” manuals are in no way a substitute for a printed manual and can only be thought as such by people who haven’t spent time watching home users, students of office workers learn their way around new software. I can understand why software companies like to go this way: a PDF manual is far cheaper to produce and cuts down on the shipping costs of the packaged product, but to the consumer who has just spent three-hundred dollars on buying DeltaGraph it seems an unnecessary economy. Having said this, the integrated help within the program itself is pretty thorough and easy to use, so even if you don’t want to print off the entire PDF manual from the CD, you can at least get the basics on the fly while working with DeltaGraph. But I’d like to have seen a quick-start guide at the very least in the box, even if the stuff about formatting charts and other advanced topics was left in the PDF.

Spreadsheet Functionality

Inevitably most users of DeltaGraph are going to come to it from Microsoft Excel, though a significant number of students and educators may be looking to trade up from the useful but limited spreadsheet module in AppleWorks. Surprisingly enough, both AppleWorks and Excel feel rather similar, being centred on cell-based formulas that can be copied to entire rows or columns of cells to allow spreadsheet-wide manipulation of data. In other words, users of Excel and AppleWorks can create a cell anywhere on the spreadsheet that displayed the result of a calculation performed on any group of cells elsewhere on the spreadsheet. Consequently graduating from AppleWorks to Excel is relatively easy. DeltaGraph feels very different. Instead of cell-based formulas, the prime means of relating the numbers in one cell to another is done using columns only. This is fine for list-based data, for example where the first column is the price in dollars and the second in euros, and the formula connecting the two rows is the exchange rate. But it falls apart where you want something that needs only a single calculation at the end of a column of data, for example the sum of all expenditures at the a four-cell column made up of the money spent on gas, repairs, insurance and tax for your motor car. The trick of course is to rotate the data so that it fills a row rather than a column, and place the sum on the fifth cell of that row, but the jarring difference between the freedom allowed in Excel and AppleWorks compared with the column-bound restrictions of DeltaGraph will annoy some users. Moreover, this system falls apart completely if you need to have calculations performed to both columns and rows simultaneously.

DeltaGraph comes with a decent array of statistical and numerical tools, certainly enough for most of analyses likely to be carried out by high school students, undergraduates and researchers outside the mathematical and statistical fields. Obvious gaps include things like pivot tables and a macro language for creating “mini-programs” for doing complex tasks with the spreadsheet data quickly.

Charting

I came to DeltaGraph wanting to explore two key modes of data presentation widely used in science and science teaching, x-y plots and spindle diagrams. Of the two, x-y plots are the most commonly seen simply because they are something as likely to be needed by children doing basic science at school as much as by academics doing research. Ubiquitous examples seen in high school education are the rates of oxygen production by photosynthesizing plants, and the effect of temperature on the rate of a chemical or enzyme-controlled reaction. Biologists and statisticians interested in demographics use spindle diagrams, to make comparisons of the sizes of different groups through time, while geologists use them to display quantities of fossils at different geological strata.

Two important modes of scientific charting are the x-y plot and the spindle diagram. Examples of each are shown here, above the x-y plot of an enzymatic reaction, and below a spindle diagram of the number of species within a certain group (say, dinosaurs) through geological time.

DeltaGraph handles x-y plots with aplomb. Provided data is entered in the appropriate way, for example, the Chart Gallery wizard works very nicely. Essentially it’s a means for the user to see the variety of chart types possible. There is a bewildering array of styles and features that the average user is going to want to ignore to begin with, but the wizard does offer a nice Advisor panel that allows the user to select the appropriate graph based on a range of specific options. Using the light intensity and rate of photosynthesis example, “Scientific/Technical” was selected under Audience, “Line” for Suggested Chart, “Comparison” for Data and so on. The resulting graph was exactly what was needed. The bottom line is that DeltaGraph has one of the nicest charting wizards I’ve ever seen. It’s logical, intuitive and effective, and although the overall program is large and complex, with a little instruction up front, even high school students should have no problems turning out the right chart quickly and easily.

Although DeltaGraph offers a broad range of charting styles, a helpful Advisor streamlines the process of selecting which options to use.

Plots of two variables against each other, x-y plots, are easily and elegantly handled, making DeltaGraph a nice tool for high school and university students working on science projects.

In contrast, Excel prefers to plot two sets of variables against a third, fixed axis. Though x-y plots can be done, they need to be done as scatter diagrams first, with the line being added afterwards.

Though the x-y plot worked very well, there wasn’t a spindle diagram mode, and to produce such a chart I needed to use the same tricks as I had with Excel. Specifically, this involved producing a stacked bar chart where “padding” numbers are used to separate out the rows of data. These are then hidden from the final chart so that the rows of data seem to float apart from each other on the diagram. As with Excel, simply clicking on things usually brings up the relevant options allowing the user to change colours or formats easily. The one notable exception is the width of the columns, which need to be stretched so that they all join together to form the spindle. To do this you need to choose “Options” under the Chart menu through an intuitive graphical display (though the place to access this, Bar Placement, isn’t entirely intuitive); once done, the spindle diagram is pretty well finished, as shown below. The absence of a spindle diagram mode diminishes the attractiveness of this package to scientists and statisticians, and moreover reflects the tendency of developers to concentrate on offering a wider range of graphical features to the charts (such as 3D effects) without expanding the modes of data presentation quite so aggressively.

Creating dummy numbers, in grey, pads out the data, in pink, is the only way to begin producing a spindle diagram.

Editing colours hides unwanted elements, while stretching the columns turns the stacked column into the proper spindle shape.

Aside from the lack of spindle diagrams, all the key stuff I’d expect from a charting package suitable for students and academics were there: histogram and pictograph tools, error bars, curves of best fit, regression curves, and so on. Again, the integrated help facility explains a lot of this rather well, even with quite complex topics like the theory of curve fitting. There are business tool, too, though these are primarily based around specific charts and the data they are best suited to presenting, such as high-low plots and pie charts.

Graphics

One of the big-ticket items to the DeltaGraph package is its ability to produce high quality graphics suitable for on-screen presentation or inclusion in books, academic reports and scientific papers. There’s no question that the ability to export a chart from DeltaGraph as not just a JPEG or PICT file but as an EPS file is going to make a lot of people happy. In comparison the files produced by Excel are limited by their PICT format and so not ideally suited for anything other that on-screen presentation as they are or inclusion in a low-quality publication such as a word processed document.

Excel graphics are exported at just 300 dpi, resulting in blurry, jagged text. In contrast DeltaGraph objects can be exported as EPS, imported into a graphics program and at whatever resolution you want.

Besides exporting charts nicely, DeltaGraph is a reasonable tool for displaying data by itself. All sorts of graphics and pieces of floating text can be added to the charts, resulting in something rather like a PowerPoint slide. There is a whole stack of templates to use for backgrounds, although getting them to fit your specific chart takes a little doing. The tools involved will be familiar to anyone who has used a graphics program like MacDraw or AppleWorks, but nonetheless some reading of the manual will be necessary. Charts within a document can be presented as a slide show, and again there are some options here such as slide transition effects and sounds. There are limits to this though: the transitions are much like those we’ve seen for years with PowerPoint and not nearly as snappy as those in Keynote, and the sound files need to be Macintosh sound resources (.snd files) rather than something more versatile like an MP3. Even so, it’s a surprisingly useful feature and one that will be ideal for students who need to give presentations at various points but would be better doing them quickly in DeltaGraph than wasting their time creating something flashier in PowerPoint or Keynote.

DeltaGraph includes some nice presentation extras such as backgrounds and the ability to paste in graphics and text around the actual chart, but though they work fine, they miss out on some of the Quartz graphics goodies we’ve gotten used to with OS X. Instead expect something a step above Excel but nonetheless comparable to PowerPoint rather than Keynote as a presentation tool.

Conclusion

The more I used DeltaGraph, the more I liked it, and the schoolteacher part of my character kept saying, “Why don’t Red Rock make a cut-down, low cost version for schools and teachers”. For those users, all the good stuff is there; the problem is getting there through the bewildering array of options and the lack of a manual, not to mention the relatively steep price even at the academic rate ($199). My scientific side appreciated Delta Graph too, as a decent step ahead of Excel in usefulness both in terms of the range of plots available and in the ease with which high-resolution graphics can be created for publication. Moreover, DeltaGraph appears to be stable, and crashed only once during my use, and I found it to be fast and reasonably intuitive once the differences with Excel were understood. It’s a versatile program, and should easily recommend itself to teachers, students and academics looking for something more suited to scientific and educational needs than Excel, a program geared at financial and business users. DeltaGraph easily earns a three-bounce rating.

But there are a couple of things that keep it shy of the coveted four-bounce score. For one thing, it may be an OS X application, but it feels decidedly OS 9. To be fair, so does Excel, but with programs like Keynote showing what the graphics engine of OS X allows the Macintosh to do, the lack of comparable power in DeltaGraph is a real shame. Keynote handles only the most rudimentary charts and lacks mathematical tools, so for all practical purposes users will be pasting charts into it from Excel or DeltaGraph. What a pity that the presentation and graphics tools in DeltaGraph don’t give us things like automatic ligatures, text that can be rotated without getting bitmapped or jagged, or semi-transparent shadows and other effects. Red Rock are actively working on a free update for DeltaGraph 5 users slated for early 2004 that will include exactly these features; and judging by the shots of the beta version I've seen, they look good, and promise to add to the long-term value of the program for Mac users needing slick graphics to combine with Keynote, and certainly take the program far beyond what is currently possible with Excel. The lack of a decent manual in the box is another missed opportunity: even a thirty-page introductory booklet would have been nice. That Red Rock Software has some good writers is evidenced by the quality of the prose in the PDF manual and in the online help, but to expect users to pay another $45 for a printed version of the manual on top of the $300 they laid out for the program just isn’t fair.

- Neale Monks

What do you think? Talk about it in our Forums...

MacBook Pro (5-17-06) Dr. Neale Monks. A subjective review of the MacBook Pro
Freeway 4 Pro (2-28-06) Dr. Neale Monks. Freeway Pro, the Quark-like web design program from Softpress, has been substantially revised and sports a bright new look. But do the changes go more than skin deep? Neale Monks finds out.
Astrostack (1-18-06) Dr. Neale Monks. Long respected as one best astronomical image processing applications about, in its newest incarnation AstroStack now runs on the Macintosh. Has the wait been worthwhile?
Virtual PC 7 (11-23-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Virtual PC 7 is the update to the venerable Windows emulator to be entirely all Microsoft’s own work. Can Mac users expect to see any dramatic changes?
Eudora Pro 6.2 (8-5-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Eudora has been one of the most popular e-mail clients for the Macintosh for more than a decade. Neale Monks finds out how it compares with the Mail application that comes with OS X
MacAstronomica (4-22-05) Dr. Neale Monks. How does this amateur naked eye astronomy software stack up?
iKey 2.0 (3-11-05) Jeremy Young. How well does this automation utility work? How much time will you save?
Wolfram Research Publicon (3-11-05) Jeff Terry Does this new scientific word processor live up to the potential?
Microsoft Office 2004, Part 3, Word (1-28-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Are there enough new features to necessitate a jump from v.X?
REALbasic 5.5 (12-03-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Neale takes a look at the latest version of this programming package.
Office 2004, Part 2, Excel and Entourage (11-05-04) Dr. Neale Monks. In the second part of his review of Office 2004, Neale Monks looks at Excel and Entourage.
Phone Valet 2.0 (11-05-04) Pat St-Arnaud. The best question to ask might be "Is there anything that you can't do with this telephone/Mac integration tool?"
TiPaint Touch-up Kit and iKlear iPod Cleaning Kit (10-29-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Is it possible to restore the shiny good looks of iPods and PowerBooks even after years of use? Neale Monks looks at two cleaning products designed especially for Apple hardware.
Microsoft Office 2004, Part 1, PowerPoint (10-15-04) Dr. Neale Monks. In the first part of his review of Office 2004, Neale Monks looks at PowerPoint, for many people still the benchmark for presentation software.
ScrapX (9-17-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Aqueous Software's ScrapX brings the Scrapbook to OS X
CDFinder (8-20-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Finding what you want from among a stack of similar looking CDs can be a hassle, but help is at hand. Neale Monks looks at CDFinder, a budget-priced but powerful cataloguing tool.
Endnote 7 (8-13-04) Dr. Markus Geisen. EndNote 7 is a literature database that seamlessly interacts with your word processor. Is the latest version worth the upgrade?