From: Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...> - 2004-04-16 15:04:40
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GNUPLOT - The Next Generation ============================= This is the official release announcement for gnuplot 4.0.0, the first major version number upgrade of gnuplot in more than a decade. G N U P L O T Version 4.0 patchlevel 0 last modified Thu Apr 15 14:44:22 CEST 2004 It has taken a long time, but the gnuplot developers sincerely hope the result was worth waiting for. See below for a list of changes since the previous release, 3.7 patchlevel 3, also known as 3.7.3. THE FAQ ======= An updated version of the gnuplot FAQ is available. It can be found at the following locations: http://www.gnuplot.info/faq.html ftp://ftp.gnuplot.info/pub/gnuplot/faq/faq.txt All main distribution sites in the faq/ subdirectory. Volunteers are encouraged to contribute --- the FAQ itself explains how. GNUPLOT AND GIF IMAGES ====================== An important note to all who wish to create GIF images with gnuplot: * Gnuplot requires the gd library from http://www.boutell.com/gd/ to * * create gif output. Note that the use of this code may subject your * * organisation to a charge of willful patent infringement (as stated * * by UNISYS) unless you are in possession of a UNISYS license. * * * * The UNISYS patent covers the LZW technology which is used to create * * gifs. To our knowledge, only gd library version 1.3 and 1.4 are free * * of LZW code and should therefore be used with gnuplot (unless you have * * a license from Unisys to use LZW code, in which case version 1.2 and 1.5 * * is fine, too). The binaries provided here have been built with version * * 1.3. Version 1.6+ cannot be used because support for GIF has been * * removed altogether. * The relevant patents will expire relatively soon, but it's quite unclear right now whether the capability to write GIF files will be restored to the GD library. As all GIF-creating versions of gd library seem to have been taken off www.boutell.com, we are providing gd library versions 1.3 and 1.4 at the gnuplot distribution sites [1]. Should any legal problems arise, we will remove this software. The PNG image format is a strongly recommended alternative to gif. See [2]. DISTRIBUTION ============ By the time you receive this, copies of gnuplot-4.0.0.tar.gz should be at the official repositories. Binary versions for various non-Unix platforms will be made available in the same places. Please allow a couple of days for these distributions to appear. A diffs file relative to gnuplot-3.7.3 will not be made --- it would be larger than the source code tarball itself. All distribution archives are signed with a public key which is available from public key servers. For more information, see the README and PGPKEYS file at the distribution sites. DISTRIBUTION SITES ================== NORTH AMERICA Anonymous ftp to ftp.gnuplot.info: ftp://ftp.gnuplot.info/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-4.0.0.tar.gz Alternatively, you can use your web browser to get gnuplot from the gnuplot web pages at http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot/ AUSTRALIA: From the AARNet Mirror Project: ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gnuplot/ http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gnuplot/ This site is not accessible outside Australia/New Zealand. Anonymous ftp to ftp.cc.monash.edu.au: ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-4.0.0.tar.gz EUROPE: Anonymous ftp to ftp.irisa.fr: ftp://ftp.irisa.fr/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-4.0.0.tar.gz Anonymous ftp to ftp.ucc.ie: ftp://ftp.ucc.ie/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-4.0.0.tar.gz OTHER: The CTAN mirror network has gnuplot in its "graphics" area: http://www.ctan.org/ Source and binary distributions for the Amiga might become available on Aminet: http://ftp.wustl.edu/~aminet/ (and its mirrors) Mac OS X binaries might become available from the http://homepage.mac.com/gnuplot/ at some stage. More likely, though, they'll end up on the main gnuplot distribution sites given above. What's New ========== The list of changes is immense this time, so only the highlights can be given here. For the full details, see the NEWS file or the ChangeLog, or look into the online version of the documentation at http://www.gnuplot.info/docs/gnuplot.html#What_is_New_in_Version_4.0 You'll quite probably have to (re-)read large parts of the documentation to learn all the details that have changed. Major changes visible to users: ------------------------------- o Global Command syntax change: instead of 'set no...' it's now 'unset ...'. o Commands 'set data style', 'set function style' and 'set linestyle' changed to 'set style {data|function|line}, respectively. o Colour-coded plots in 3D and simulated 2D through the new 'pm3d' plotting style. o Boxes drawn by plotstyles 'boxes', 'candlesticks' and boxed errorbar styles can be filled with solid colors or hatch patterns. o New plot style 'with filledcurves' to fill an area defined by a curve in solid colour. o Windows, X11, OS/2 and GGI interactive graphical terminals now support interaction with the plot window by mouse and hotkeys. o The "enhanced" mode has been generalized from PostScript to some other terminal drivers. o 'set hidden3d' mode accepts non-grid data and hides them behind gridded surfaces plotted with them. o Several new terminal drivers: EMF, PDF, SVG, GGI, epslatex, aqua. o New function to query if a user-defined variable exists. o PNG and JPEG terminals using the GD library support libfreetype to use true-type fonts. o 'set label' can output a point symbol the comment refers to, and the text itself can be rotated by arbitrary angles (on some terminals). o The color of text elements can be changed. o 'set size ratio' now affects 3D plots, too. o The 'dgrid3d' can be switched between thin-plate splines and the older weighted averaging method, at compile time. o Some terminals now support 'koi8-r', ISO-Latin-2 and CP-852 encoding of user input. o Windows gnuplot recognizes the Unix/X11 style '-persist' option, and supports changing linewidth by core gnuplot commands. o A native compilation option of gnuplot for Mac OS X is now part of the mainline source, using the 'aquaterm' driver [3]. o Datafile comment character, column separator and decimal sign can be changed. o Arrows can be drawn with relative coordinates for the head, and the heads can be filled. o Allows 'set timefmt' independantly for each axis, and supports new '%s' format for seconds-since-1970 input. o Even more documentation misprints have been fixed, thanks to Shigeharu TAKENO Internal changes: ----------------- o Reorganization of the entire source tree. o Broken into considerably more source files than before. o Large sets of related global variables have been collected into relatively few global data structures (the 'axis' array and a global 'key' data structure, e.g.). o The gnuplot_x11 driver no longer is installed in the PATH, to avoid confusion about it. o Scaling and ticking of time/date axes respects the fact that 12 and 60 are not the same 10 or 100 much better. And, obviously, more bug fixes than could possibly fit into this narrow margin... THE CONTRIB SECTION =================== An improved gnuplot mode for X/Emacs by Bruce Ravel available from http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel/software/gnuplot-mode/Welcome.html has been incorporated into to the gnuplot source tree. CREDITS ======= The gnuplot team would like to thank all who have contributed to this release through discussions, suggestions, bug reports, and patches, on Usenet and mailing lists. Special thanks go to Juergen von Hagen who maintained the gnuplot FAQ for a while. To Ethan Merritt and Petr Mikulik for lots of work all over the place, and to Johannes Zellner for his work on X11 support for mouse and pm3d. -Thomas Williams- -Lars Hecking- -Hans-Bernhard Broeker- FOOTNOTES ========= [1] The gif terminal driver requires third party software. Because the version of gd library currently at http://www.boutell.com/gd/ does NOT create gif images, we are providing gd library version 1.3 and 1.4 at from the gnuplot distribution sites. [2] the png terminal driver requires third party software. The png graphics library and zlib can be downloaded from http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html and http://www.gzip.org/zlib/ respectively. They are also available from the gnuplot distribution sites. [3] The aquaterm terminal driver requires third party software. AquaTerm and libaquaterm can be downloaded from http://aquaterm.sourceforge.net |