Flot Reference
--------------

Consider a call to the plot function:

   var plot = $.plot(placeholder, data, options)

The placeholder is a jQuery object that the plot will be put into.
This placeholder needs to have its width and height set as explained
in the README. The plot will modify some properties of the placeholder
so it's recommended you simply pass in a div that you don't use it for
anything else.

The format of the data is documented below, as is the available
options. The "plot" object returned has some members you can call.
These are documented separately below.

Note that in general there are no guarantees if you change any of the
objects you pass in to the plot function or get out of it as the
objects may not be deep-copied.


Data Format
-----------

The data is an array of data series:

  [ series1, series2, ... ]

A series can either be raw data or an object with properties. The raw
data format is an array of points:

  [ [x1, y1], [x2, y2], ... ]

E.g.

  [ [1, 3], [2, 14.01], [3.5, 3.14] ]

The format of a single series object is as follows:

  {
    color: color or number,
    data: rawdata,
    label: string,
    lines: specific lines options,
    bars: specific bars options,
    points: specific points options,
    shadowSize: number
  }

You don't have to specify any of them except the data, the rest are
options that will get default values. Typically you'd only specify
label and data, like this:

  {
    label: "y = 3",
    data: [[0, 3], [10, 3]]
  }

The label is used for the legend, if you don't specify one, the series
will not show up in the legend.

If you don't specify color, the series will get a color from the
auto-generated colors. The color is either a CSS color specification
(like "rgb(255, 100, 123)") or an integer that specifies which of
auto-generated colors to select, e.g. 0 will get color no. 0, etc.

The latter is mostly useful if you let the user add and remove series,
in which case you can hard-code the color index to prevent the colors
from jumping around between the series.

The rest of the options are all documented below as they are the same
as the default options passed in via the options parameter in the plot
commmand. When you specify them for a specific data series, they will
override the default options for the plot for that data series.


Plot Options
------------

All options are completely optional. They are documented individually
below, to change them you just specify them in an object, e.g.

  var options = {
    lines: { show: true },
    points: { show: true }
  };

  $.plot(placeholder, data, options);


Customizing the legend
======================

  legend: {
    show: boolean,
    noColumns: number,
    labelBoxBorderColor: color,
    position: "ne" or "nw" or "se" or "sw",
    margin: number of pixels,
    backgroundColor: null or color,
    backgroundOpacity: number in 0.0 - 1.0,
    container: null or jQuery object
  }

The legend is generated as a table with the data series labels and
small label boxes with the color of the series. "noColumns" is the
number of columns to divide the legend table into. "position"
specifies the overall placement of the legend within the plot
(top-right, top-left, etc.) and margin the distance to the plot edge.
"backgroundColor" and "backgroundOpacity" specifies the background.
The default is a partly transparent auto-detected background.

If you want the legend to appear somewhere else, you can specify
"container" as a jQuery object to put the legend table in. The
"position" and "margin" etc. will then be ignored.


Customizing the axes
====================

  xaxis, yaxis: {
    ticks: null or ticks array,
    noTicks: number,
    tickFormatter: fn: number -> string,
    tickDecimals: null or number,
    min: null or number,
    max: null or number,
    autoscaleMargin: number
  }

The two axes have the same kind of options. The most import are
min/max that specifies the precise minimum/maximum value on the scale.
If you don't specify a value, it will automatically be chosen by a
scaling algorithm that is based on perceived reasonable tick values.
The "autoscaleMargin" is the fraction of margin that the scaling
algorithm will add to avoid that the outermost points ends up on the
grid outline. The default value is 0 for the x axis and 0.02 for the y
axis.

The rest of the options deal with the ticks. If you don't specify any
ticks, a tick generator algorithm will make some for you based on the
"noTicks" setting. The algorithm always tries to generate reasonably
round tick values so even if you ask for 3 ticks, you might get 5 if
that fits better with the rounding.

You can control how the ticks look like with "tickDecimals", the
number of decimals to display (default is auto-detected), or by
providing a function to "tickFormatter". The function gets one
argument, the tick value, and should return a string. The default
formatter looks like this:

  function defaultTickFormatter(val) {
    return "" + val;
  }

If you want to override the tick algorithm, you can manually specify
"ticks" which should be an array of tick values, either like this:

  ticks: [0, 1.2, 2.4]

Or like this (you can mix the two if you like):

  ticks: [[0, "zero"], [1.2, "one mark"], [2.4, "two marks"]]

For extra flexibility you can specify a function as the "ticks"
parameter. The function will be called with an object with the axis
min and max and should return a ticks array. Here's a simplistic tick
generator that spits out intervals of pi, suitable for use on the x
axis for trigonometric functions:

  function piTickGenerator(axis) {
    var res = [], i = Math.ceil(axis.min / Math.PI);
    while (true) {
      var v = i * Math.PI;
      if (v > axis.max)
        break;
      res.push([v, i + "\u03c0"]);
      ++i;
    }
    
    return res;
  }

Note that the scaling and tick algorithms don't work with time series
yet.


Customizing the data series
===========================

  lines, points, bars: {
    show: boolean,
    lineWidth: number,
    fill: boolean,
    fillColor: color or null
  }

  points: {
    radius: number
  }

  bars: {
    barWidth: number
  }

  colors: [ color1, color2, ... ]

  shadowSize: number

The most important options are "lines", "points" and "bars" that
specifies whether and how lines, points and bars should be shown for
each data series. You can specify them independently of each other,
and Flot will happily draw each of them in turn, e.g.

  var options = {
    lines: { show: true, fill: true, fillColor: "rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.8)" },
    points: { show: true, fill: false }
  };

"lineWidth" is the thickness of the line or outline and "fill" is
whether the shape should be filled. For lines, this produces area
graphs. If "fillColor" is null (default), the color for the data
series is used.

Note that the options that take numbers works in units of pixels, but
"barWidth" is the width of the bars in units of the x axis to allow
for scaling.

The "colors" array specifies a default color theme to get colors for
the data series from. You can specify as many colors as you like, like
this:

  colors: ["#d18b2c", "#dba255", "#919733"]

If there are more data series than colors, Flot will try to generate
extra colors by lightening and darkening colors in the theme.

"shadowSize" is the default size of shadows in pixels. Set it to 0 to
remove shadows.


Customizing the grid
====================

  grid: {
    color: color,
    backgroundColor: color or null,
    tickColor: color,
    labelMargin: number
  }

The grid is the thing with the two axes and a number of ticks. "color"
is the color of the grid itself whereas "backgroundColor" specifies
the background color inside the grid area. The default value of null
means that the background is transparent. You should only need to set
backgroundColor if want the grid area to be a different color from the
page color. Otherwise you might as well just set the background color
of the page with CSS.

"tickColor" is the color of the ticks and labelMargin is the spacing
between tick labels and the grid.


Customizing the selection
=========================

  selection: {
    mode: null or "x" or "y" or "xy",
    color: color
  }

You enable selection support by setting the mode to one of "x", "y" or
"xy". In "x" mode, the user will only be able to specify the x range,
similarly for "y" mode. For "xy", the selection becomes a rectangle
where both ranges can be specified. "color" is color of the selection.

When selection support is enabled, a "selected" event will be emitted
on the DOM element you passed into the plot function. The event
handler gets one extra parameter with the area selected, like this:

  placeholder.bind("selected", function(event, area) {
    // area selected is area.x1 to area.x2 and area.y1 to area.y2
  });


Plot Members
------------

The Plot object returned from the plot function has the following
members:

  - clearSelection()

    Clear the selection rectangle.

  - setSelection(area)

    Set the selection rectangle. The passed in area should have the
    members x1 and x2 if the selection mode is "x" and y1 and y2 if
    the selection mode is "y" and both x1, x2 and y1, y2 if the
    selection mode is "xy", like this:

      setSelection({ x1: 0, x2: 10, y1: 40, y2: 60});

    setSelection will trigger the "selected" event when called so you
    may have to do a bit of shortcircuiting to prevent an eternal loop
    if you invoke the method inside the "selected" handler.

  - getCanvas()

    Returns the canvas used for drawing in case you need to hack on it
    yourself. You'll probably need to get the plot offset too.
  
  - getPlotOffset()

    Gets the offset that the grid has within the canvas as an object
    with the members left, right, top, bottom. I.e., if you draw a
    circle on the canvas with the center placed at (left, top), its
    center will be at the top-most, left corner of the grid.