C# Charting Library

Question

I've been looking for a good cross-platform charting library to use on a .NET project intended to be run on both Windows and Linux, but everything looks to have a dependency on WinForms controls, seemingly including ZedGraph (not to mention that ZedGraph looks a bit, well, dated).

Microsoft's Chart Controls for WinForms/ASP.NET look great, but like I said, have a dependency on WinForms controls. I know Mono includes WinForms support for Linux, but I'd rather not have to have Linux end-users install WinForms for what's going to end up being a GTK# application.

Does anyone know of any .NET charting library out there that don't depend on WinForms and that has good visual appeal?

P.S. As an example of a nice visual style, on a different PHP-based project, we use pChart (which I would link, but I don't have enough rep for it).

P.P.S. I've thought about using the Google Chart API, but I don't want to require a network connection just to generate charts.

Answer 1

They require Windows.Forms, since GDI (graphics) functions reside in that particular library. Any other chart control will have to use either 3rd party library or provide its own graphics toolkit.

The best thing I could find is Apache FOP: http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/

You should be able to run it from command line, or integrate it using IKVM.

Finally, why don't you want Windows.Forms library? As far as I know, mono provides a sufficiently working one.

Answer 2

After looking for something that's both aesthetically pleasing and usable cross-platform, I think I might try to write my own.