Methods and systems provide a "chart view" for a markup language referred to as Reusable Data Markup Language ("RDML"). Generally, a chart view comprises the components necessary for automatically manipulating and displaying a graphical display of numerical data contained in RDML markup documents. RDML is a markup language, such as the Hypertext Markup Language ("HTML") or the Extensible Markup Language ("XML"). Generally, RDML facilitates the browsing and manipulation of numbers, as opposed to text as in HTML, and does so by requiring attributes describing the meaning of the numbers to be attached to the numbers. Upon receiving RDML markup documents, the chart view transforms, formats, manipulates and displays data stored in the markup documents using the attributes describing the meaning of the data. The chart view uses the attributes of the numbers to, for example, facilitate the simultaneous display of different series of numbers of different types on a single chart and automatically display appropriate axis labels, axis titles, chart titles, number precision, etc. A chart view may be a component of a data viewer used to retrieve, manipulate, and view documents in the RDML format.