[SAJ]

Worldwide, there is only one type of futures contract, speaking broadly. There are, however, three types of settlement for futures contracts.

The first is by delivery of the goods, of whatever type, from seller to buyer on or after the first allowable date for delivery (in the US, this date is called 'first notice day'). The seller of the contract, the short, decides whether or not to make delivery in order to settle the contract.

The second, and far and away the most common, type of settlement is by offset. If one is short (i.e 'has previously sold') 5 Dec Wheat, one buys later on 5 Dec Wheat, scores up the profit or loss, and is flat (i.e. out of) the mkt.

The third is cash settlement, as for instance in the CME Lean Hogs contract. Nobody delivers anything to anyone, ever. All contracts that have not been offset on the contract's expiration date are settled ''for cash''. The exchange fixes a final settlement price for the contract in question, and both the owners and shorts of the remaining open contracts calc their profits or losses and either pony up or collect, in a manner defined by the exchange and governed/enforced by the exchange member brokerages.

There are certainly any number of other contracts-in-future when dealing in physical or financial goods. These include spot, forwards, swaps, and switches among other things. None of these are futures contracts. These have different terms and different methods of settlement, although, to be completely fair, there are now a number of futures mkts in various swaps. Still, a swap and a swap future are two different critters.

Different topic ----

I'm not asking how to embed PNG graphics in anything. I have a page, generated by PHP and that blasted 'header' structure, that uses PNG graphics to display the information I want displayed (just an ordinary daily bar chart for ...surprise!... futures prices). This works very well and produces a nice graphical image. No change required here.

What I need to do is to insert **INTO** that page assorted clickable links to other web pages. Ideally, in the best possible case, I'd like these links to be able to use Javascript in order to accomplish one or another 'special' effects. No Java required or desired, and I'll have nothing to do with Active X controls or anything similar.

And that, to quote the odious Walter Cronkite, is the way it is. Grateful for any/all practical advice.

Many thanks again for your patience with my, evidently, poor explanation!

[StJacques]

Well if it's PHP I would be recommending Java components in some form or another here, but if you don't want to go that way, ok, I understand.

But let me ask you two questions.

1. Are you using a .php development tool to create your page code, like PHPTriad or something, which has its own IDE (Integrated Development Environment -- a visual programming interface like Eclipse)?

2. Do you know beforehand what the links are you wish to create (in other words can they be "hard coded" up front) or are the links considered "dynamic content" in that possibly their number, placement on the page, href attributes, appearance, event handlers, etc. are not known until the rest of the content is determined? Note: if the latter is true, i.e. that they are "dynamic content," then you are almost certainly going to need to create at least one "class" to handle this chore and that means either a .php class or possibly a Java class depending upon whether you have an IDE that permits you to do so.

Sorry if I'm burying you in tech-speak but the essential issues are simply two -- development tools and links as "independent" or "dependent" content.

Get past this and I'll see where we are then.