Flag to position labels at the beginning of each interval

[DrNiels]

As an alternative to the dynamic placing of labels for DateTimeIntervalType.months and DateTimeIntervalType.years, the flag labelsAtBeginning can be set to true for DateTimeAxis to force the label position to the beginning of each month or year, respectively. Lower interval types already place the labels at the beginning of the corresponding intervals, so they are not affected by the flag. Similarly, auto is not based on any interval, so there's no effect as well.

See the difference in the video:

labelsAtBeginning.mp4

The upper charts show the updated behavior with the flag set while the lower charts show the legacy behavior without the flag set. The example is available here: https://github.com/DrNiels/flutter-widgets/blob/example/fixed-axis-ticks/packages/syncfusion_flutter_charts/example/lib/main.dart

I tried my best, but I'm still foreign to your personal coding practices, so feel free to remark anything and I will adjust the code accordingly.

In response to the feature request: https://www.syncfusion.com/feedback/36499/instead-of-recalculating-the-axis-labels-keep-them-stable-on-panning
And the issue: #2130

[Mugunthan-Ramalingam]

Hi @DrNiels,

Thank you for your contribution and suggestions.

We have reviewed the changes shared in the pull request. While we appreciate the effort, we need to validate this behavior across all possible scenarios before considering it for inclusion at the source level. This requires thorough planning, testing, and design review.

As we are already tracking this improvement through an existing feature request, we are currently not accepting direct open-source contributions but welcome your suggestions through the FR system, where your feedback will be considered during the planning and implementation phase, though we cannot commit to a specific timeline at this stage.

FR: Instead of recalculating the axis labels keep them stable on panning in Flutter | Feedback Portal

Regards,
Mugunthan.

[DrNiels]

I must admit, I'm a bit confused. In that very FR, I asked if you were interested in a Pull Request and Saravanan Madheswaran motivated me to do so. Now I did and you tell me that you're not accepting my PR as there's already something in the loop.

These things happen, but it's unfortunate. Maybe you want to get back to your collegue as it seems there's a bit of miscommunication here or I understood something wrong. In any case, it would be nice if we found a productive way forward to solve this issue and get this fix running.

[Saravanan-Madhesh]

Hi @DrNiels,

I apologize for any confusion caused by our previous communications. We genuinely value and appreciate your enthusiasm and efforts to contribute to our Flutter chart. Your willingness to improve our components is commendable.

However, I must clarify that, at this time, Syncfusion does not encourage external contributions to our source code for certain components, including our Flutter chart, as we need to ensure all integrations align precisely with our architectural plans and product integrity. Integrating external pull requests requires thorough validation, planning, testing, and design reviews, which must be handled internally to maintain consistency and stability.

We recognize the importance of your contribution and appreciate the effort you put into creating it. While we cannot merge the changes directly at this point, we will certainly review your suggestions and initiate a plan to potentially incorporate them into the existing Feature Request (FR). Further updates and details on this will be communicated through our FR system.

Thank you for understanding, and we hope to continue receiving your insightful feedback as we work towards enhancing our products.

[DrNiels]

Thank you for the response. I absolutely understand that external code is always a challenge by itself, especially if other developers have different styles than you have.

As there are a small number of things that I consider relevant for our product (this PR, #2357, #2380), I will handle those in my fork. Even if you're not merging them directly, are you interested in my changes or would this simply cause unneeded overhead on your end? As I'm implementing them anyway, creating a PR is easily done for me. But I only want to do so if it actually helps instead of burdening you.