Stephen E. Beller wrote:
> 
> I may be asking XML to do too much in this case. Is there some kind of
> JavaScript called from and XML file, or an IE plug-in, or some other way to
> access pre-configured arrays, possibly stored in an external text file, and
> apply appropriate parsing and rendering routines to display the chart in a
> browser?

In addition to behaviors, there are various spreadsheet plugins and 
charting plugins for IE, and presumably you can program them with VB or 
javascript.  You could extract the data from the xml document and give 
it to the plugin.

One such control is at

http://www.teemach.com/products/teechart/teechartindex.htm

I have not used it, but it says it has a COM version, so it ought to be 
scriptable and usable in IE.

You might also be able to use so-called data binding within IE to get at 
the data.  At least, that can connect xml data to html elements, though 
I am not sure if you can get from there to charting.

Whether you use one of these controls, VML, or whatever, you will 
probably want to get the data out of the XML and into some other data 
structures for easy access by your scripts.

Cheers,

Tom P