Revision: 8063
http://plplot.svn.sourceforge.net/plplot/?rev=8063&view=rev
Author: hbabcock
Date: 2007-12-03 16:02:25 -0800 (Mon, 03 Dec 2007)
Log Message:
-----------
Updated so that people can start adding notes about what has changed since 5.8.0.
Modified Paths:
--------------
trunk/README.release
Modified: trunk/README.release
===================================================================
--- trunk/README.release 2007-12-03 22:09:46 UTC (rev 8062)
+++ trunk/README.release 2007-12-04 00:02:25 UTC (rev 8063)
@@ -1,311 +1,20 @@
-PLplot Release 5.8.0
+PLplot Release 5.9.1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+This is a routine development release of PLplot. It represents the ongoing
+efforts of the community to improve the PLplot plotting package. Development
+releases in the 5.9.x series will be available every few months. The next
+stable release will be 5.10.0.
-This is a stable release of PLplot. It represents the ongoing efforts of the
-community to improve the PLplot plotting package. Development releases in the
-5.9.x series will be available every few months. The next stable release will
-be 5.10.0.
-
If you encounter a problem that is not already documented in the
PROBLEMS file, then please send bug reports to PLplot developers via the
mailing lists at http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=2915 .
Please see the license under which this software is distributed
-(LGPL), and the disclaimer of all warranties, given in the COPYING.LIB
+(LGPL), and the disclaimer of all warrantees, given in the COPYING.LIB
file.
-N.B. This is the official notice that our deprecated autotools-based build
-system is scheduled for removal starting with the 5.9.0 release. The reason
-for this decision is the PLplot developers and users are happy with our
-CMake-based build system (see below), and nobody has been willing to spend
-time maintaining our old autotools-based build system.
-
-Note for Windows users:
-The same holds for the old Windows build system in sys/win32/msdev. This
-build system is much less flexible than the CMake-based system. It also
-lacks a larger number of important features - freetype text, language
-bindings and so on. With the 5.9.0 release the source distribution will
-no longer contain this directory. Hence you should switch to the new
-build system described below.
-
-Note for gfortran users of our f95 bindings: gfortran version 4.2.1 or later
-is a requirement, see fortran 95 bindings remarks below.
-
-Note for OS-X users:
-The Octave bindings no longer work for Octave 2.1.73. Work is ongoing to
-try and solve this problem.
-
-
INDEX
-1. Changes relative to PLplot 5.7.4
- 1.1 Drivers
- 1.1.1 cairo devices
- 1.1.2 plmeta/plrender
- 1.2 Fortran 95 bindings
- 1.3 plmtex3/plptex3
- 1.4 Octave 2.9
-
-2. Changes relative to PLplot 5.6.1
- 2.1 CVS to Subversion conversion
- 2.2 CMake build system
- 2.3 Plot Buffering
- 2.4 Updated INSTALL/README
- 2.5 malloc/calloc clean up
- 2.6 Documentation
- 2.7 Additions to the PLplot API
- 2.8 Language bindings
- 2.8.1 ADA language binding
- 2.8.2 wxwidgets applications bindings
- 2.8.3 Python bindings
- 2.8.4 Fortran 95 bindings
- 2.8.5 Octave 2.9
- 2.9 Updated examples
- 2.10 Drivers
- 2.10.1 psttf
- 2.10.2 svg
- 2.10.3 wxwidgets
- 2.10.4 pdf
- 2.10.5 gd, wingcc (freetype)
- 2.10.6 cairo
- 2.10.7 pstex
- 2.10.8 plmeta (and plrender application to render plmeta results).
+1. Changes relative to PLplot 5.8.0
-
-1. Changes relative to PLplot 5.7.4 (the previous development release)
-
-1.1 Drivers
- 1.1.1 cairo devices
- The xwinttf driver has been renamed xcairo. In addition most of the
- other devices that are theoretically possible with Cairo have been
- implemented. These are a PostScript device (pscairo), a PNG device
- (pngcairo), a PDF device (pdfcairo), an SVG device (svgcairo), and a
- memory device (memcairo). The cairo device driver is still considered
- experimental as a whole. Known issues include improper text rendering
- with svgcairo and memcairo not working at all so those two devices are
- disabled by default. The pngcairo, pscairo, and xcairo devices appear
- to work without problems and also give outstanding-looking antialiased
- and hinted results so are enabled by default. The pdfcairo device
- appears to work reasonably well so is enabled by default although it is
- not as mature as the other Cairo devices that are enabled.
-
- 1.1.2 plmeta/plrender
- The combination of the plmeta device and the plrender application
- that renders plmeta results is unmaintained and has some known issues
- with strings, aspect ratio changes, and fonts. Therefore, the plmeta
- device is now not enabled by default, and must be specifically enabled
- by the user using the -DPLD_plmeta=ON cmake option. Furthermore,
- plrender is not built or installed and the plrender man page is not
- installed unless the plmeta device is specifically enabled.
-
-1.2 Fortran 95 bindings
-
- Equivalance statements in our F95 bindings were causing problems for
- one fortran 95 compiler so we have dropped those equivalence statements
- and use the transfer intrinsic instead. However, for gfortran that
- intrinsic was only implemented for version 4.2.1 so that is the
- minimum version requirement for gfortran now if you attempt to build
- the f95 bindings. Note, earlier versions of gfortran build the f77
- bindings with no problems.
-
-1.3 plmtex3/plptex3
-
- These two functions, which were added in release 5.7.3, had a number
- of bugs. These have hopefully been cleaned up. Example 28 demonstrates
- how to use these functions. The functions and the example have now been
- implemented for most language bindings.
-
-1.4 Octave 2.9
-
- Octave 2.9 has a number of significant differences from version 2.1.
- The octave language bindings have been updated to work with this new
- version since the latest 2.9.x release is now the "recommended" choice
- by the octave developers. Note that all the low-level plplot functions
- work as expected. The higher level functions which replace the default
- octave / gnuplot plotting commands mostly work as for version 2.1. They
- do not (yet) replicate the new and more Matlab-like functionality in
- the latest 2.9.x releases of Octave.
-
- Note: As a result of the compatibilty code for octave 2.1 and lower the
- octave bindings will generate spurious warnings about obsolete built-in
- variables when using octave 2.9. These can be silenced using the command
- warning("off","Octave:built-in-variable-assignment");
- before using the plplot bindings. This is not enabled by default as it
- would also turn off genuine warnings in your own code which you might
- want to fix.
-
-
-2. Changes relative to PLplot 5.6.1 (the previous stable release)
-
-2.1 CVS to Subversion conversion
-
- PLplot now uses the Subversion (svn) version control system. Records of
-all the changes and release tags have been preserved from the CVS repository.
-
-2.2 CMake build system
-
- PLplot now uses the CMake build system (www.cmake.org) and the older
-autotools build system has been deprecated and is scheduled for removal as
-of the 5.9.0 release. The switch to CMake was made due its superior support
-for Windows platforms and its relative simplicity compared to autotools on
-Unix. To use CMake to configure and build PLplot follow the directions at
-http://www.miscdebris.net/plplot_wiki/.
-
-2.3 Plot Buffering
-
- PLplot core has been modified to buffer plot commands in memory rather than
-via a unix pipe or temporary file. Testing has shown that there is 20-30%
-improvement in plotting performance (i.e. speed). This is likely to be system
-dependent and some may see a much larger benefit. This also resolves a problem
-with some windows platforms where the temporary files were not getting deleted.
-
-2.4 Updated INSTALL/README
-
- The INSTALL and README files have been updated. They now include detailed
-instructions for building plplot using the new CMake build system on Linux
-and Windows.
-
-2.5 malloc/calloc clean up
-
- Checks have been added to many (all?) of the calls to calloc and malloc in
-the PLplot core. The purpose of the check is to verify that the memory
-requested was actually allocated prior to attempting to use it.
-
-2.6 Documentation
-
- The API section has been expanded to include information about how to call
-the functions from Fortran95, Java, Perl/PDL and Python. Since array dimension
-information is typically redundant in these languages it is dropped in many
-of the relevant function. Additionally, some of the Perl/PDL function calls
-have a different argument order than their C equivalent. This section has also
-been expanded to include a list of which examples each function is used in
-(if any).
-
- The Fortran95 documentation has been updated.
-
-2.7 Additions to the PLplot API
-
- The functions plptex3 and plmtex3 have been added to the PLplot API. These
-allow the user to draw text in "3D" on the 3D plots. plptex3 is the 3D
-equivalent of plptex and plmtex3 is the 3D equivalent of plmtex. Their
-use is demonstrated by example 28.
-
-2.8 Language bindings
- 2.8.1 ADA
- Jerry Bauck has donated bindings to the ADA programming language.
- These bindings have been included into the CMake build system,
- and should be generated automatically if you have an ADA compiler and
- you specify the cmake option -DENABLE_ada=ON. The ADA bindings are now
- considered complete and the current focus is on implementing all of the
- examples in ADA to help test the bindings. Until that work is completed
- these bindings should be considered experimental.
-
- 2.8.2 wxwidgets applications bindings
- The wxWidgets bindings provide an interface to the PLplot API and a
- simple widget to be used in a wxWidgets application. The class
- 'wxPLplotstream' inherited from the PLplot class 'plstream' allows access
- to the complete PLplot API. 'wxPLplotWindow' is a simple wxWidget which
- takes care of some preparatory work for convenient use of the PLplot
- Library within a wxWidgets application.
-
- 2.8.3 Python bindings
- The Python bindings have been updated to use numpy rather than the now
- deprecated Numeric python numeric library.
-
- 2.8.4 Fortran 95 bindings
- Equivalance statements in our F95 bindings were causing problems for
- one fortran 95 compiler so we have dropped those equivalence statements
- and use the transfer intrinsic instead. However, for gfortran that
- intrinsic was only implemented for version 4.1.2 so that is the
- minimum version requirement for gfortran now if you attempt to build
- the f95 bindings. Note, earlier versions of gfortran build the f77
- bindings with no problems.
-
- 2.8.5 Octave 2.9
- Octave 2.9 has a number of significant differences from version 2.1.
- The octave language bindings have been updated to work with this new
- version since the latest 2.9.x release is now the "recommended" choice
- by the octave developers. Note that all the low-level plplot functions
- work as expected. The higher level functions which replace the default
- octave / gnuplot plotting commands mostly work as for version 2.1. They
- do not (yet) replicate the new and more Matlab-like functionality in
- the latest 2.9.x releases of Octave.
-
- Note: As a result of the compatibilty code for octave 2.1 and lower the
- octave bindings will generate spurious warnings about obsolete built-in
- variables when using octave 2.9. These can be silenced using the command
- warning("off","Octave:built-in-variable-assignment");
- before using the plplot bindings. This is not enabled by default as it
- would also turn off genuine warnings in your own code which you might
- want to fix.
-
-2.9 Updated examples
-
- The examples have been checked over to make sure that they all work
-and to make them more consistent across different programming languages.
-
-2.10 Drivers
- 2.10.1 psttf
- This device driver now requires LASi version 1.0.6 or 1.0.5pl. See
- http://www.unifont.org/lasi/ for instructions (depending on installed
- version of FreeType library) on which to choose.
-
- 2.10.2 svg
- This is a new device driver that creates Scalable Vector Graphics files
- (http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/). SVG is a XML language describing
- graphics that is supported directly or via plug-ins in most modern web
- browsers. The driver is off by default as its text handling has not been
- perfected.
-
- 2.10.3 wxwidgets
- This driver has been updated a great deal. The most important improvements
- have been to the antialiasing part of the driver. It is now about 4 times
- faster than it was, and is nearly comparable in speed to the driver
- with the antialiasing turned off. In addition the antialiasing code can
- now handle filled polygons and window resizing.
-
- 2.10.4 pdf
- A basic version of a pdf driver was added to the latest PLplot release.
- This driver is based on the libharu library
- (http://libharu.sourceforge.net/). At present only the Hershey fonts are
- used and there is no support for pdf or TrueType fonts. Compression of the
- pdf output is not enabled and the paper size can't be chosen. All these
- issues will be addressed in later releases.
-
- 2.10.5 gd, wingcc (freetype)
- Improved anti-aliasing routines have been added to PLplot's freetype
- font rendering engine. The gd and wingcc drivers have been modified in
- turn to take advantage of these new routines, leading to improved text
- rendering.
-
- 2.10.6 cairo
- This is a family of drivers that use the Cairo graphics library to
- render text and graphics. The graphics and the text are both
- anti-aliased which yields some outstanding-looking results. This driver
- is unicode enabled, and Truetype fonts are used by default. Most of the
- devices that are theoretically possible with Cairo have been
- implemented. These are an X device (xcairo), a PostScript device
- (pscairo), a PNG device (pngcairo, a PDF device (pdfcairo), an SVG
- device (svgcairo), and a memory device (memcairo). The cairo device
- driver is still considered experimental as a whole. Known issues include
- improper text rendering with svgcairo and memcairo not working at all so
- those two devices are disabled by default. The pngcairo, pscairo, and
- xcairo devices appear to work without problems and also give
- outstanding-looking antialiased and hinted results so are enabled by
- default. The pdfcairo device appears to work reasonable well so is
- enabled by default although it is not as mature as the other three cairo
- devices that are enabled.
-
- 2.10.7 pstex driver
- This Latex driver has now been resurrected from years of neglect and
- aside from bounding box issues seems to be working well. Should be
- useful for Latex enthusiasts.
-
- 2.10.8 plmeta driver
- The combination of the plmeta device and the plrender application that
- renders plmeta results is unmaintained and has some known issues with
- strings, aspect ratio changes, and fonts. Therefore, the plmeta device
- is now not enabled by default, and must be specifically enabled by the
- user using the -DPLD_plmeta=ON cmake option. Furthermore, plrender is
- not built or installed and the plrender man page is not installed unless
- the plmeta device is specifically enabled.
+1. Changes relative to PLplot 5.8.0 (the previous stable release)
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