THOUGHTS

I invision chart_fu as really serving two seperate (but complimentary) functions: 
 * backend for multiple charting backends
 * "intelligently" generating charts using convention-over-configuration techniques
 
Backend for Multiple Charting Backends
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A big problem with Ruby chart libraries (and chart libraries in general) is the lack of a standard API for generating output. gruff has one way, chart_director another, and gchartrb yet another. I want to be able to distill an optimal API for multiple types of charts, then write backend adapters for this API to 

This'll involve looking at each charting library and finding common and superior APIs.

Other Charting APIs to Look At and Learn From
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* gruff 
* gchartrb
  Has an interesting approach to shared elements of charts (i.e., Legends): using mixins to share common functionality 


Convention-over-Configurtion Chart Generation
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The genesis for chart_fu was the desire to be able to write <%= chart_fu Post %> and get a chart of posts created over time. or maybe <%= chart_fu Post, User %> and get a two-series chart of posts and users over time.

Then I thought of more ways this could be used, with multiple Ruby data types... arrays, hashes, etc.