[Geographiclib-announce] GeographicLib 1.46 (released 2016-02-15)

[Charles K. <cha...@sr...>]

Changes between 1.46 (released 2016-02-15) and 1.45 versions:

   * The following BUGS have been fixed:
     + the -w flag to Planimeter(1) was being ignored;
     + in the Java package, the wrong longitude was being returned with
       direct geodesic calculation with a negative distance when starting
       point was at a pole (this bug was introduced in version 1.44);
     + in the JavaScript package, PolygonArea.TestEdge contained a
       misspelling of a variable name and other typos (problem found by
       threepointone).

   * INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES:
     + make the -w flag (to swap the default order of latitude and
       longitude) a toggle for all utility programs;
     + the -a option to GeodSolve(1) now toggles (instead of sets) arc
       mode;
     + swap order coslon and sinlon arguments in CircularEngine class.

   * Remove deprecated functionality:
     + remove gradient calculation from the Geoid class and GeoidEval(1)
       (this was inaccurate and of dubious utility);
     + remove reciprocal flattening functions, InverseFlattening in many
       classes and Constants::WGS84_r(); stop treating flattening > 1 as
       the reciprocal flattening in constructors;
     + remove DMS::Decode(string), DMS::DecodeFraction,
       EllipticFunction:m, EllipticFunction:m1, Math::extradigits,
       Math::AngNormalize2, PolygonArea::TestCompute;
     + stop treating LONG_NOWRAP as an alias for LONG_UNROLL in Geodesic
       (and related classes) and Rhumb;
     + stop treating full/schmidt as aliases for FULL/SCHMIDT in
       SphericalEngine (and related classes);
     + remove qmake project file src/GeographicLib.pro because QtCreator
       can handle cmake projects now;
     + remove deprecated Visual Studio 2005 project and solution files.

   * Changes to GeodesicLine and GeodesicLineExact classes; these changes
     (1) simplify the process of computing waypoints on a geodesic given
     two endpoints and (2) allow a GeodesicLine to be defined which is
     consistent with the solution of the inverse problem (in particular
     Geodesic::InverseLine the specification of south-going lines which
     pass the poles in a westerly direction by setting sin alpha_1 = -0):
     + the class stores the distance s13 and arc length a13 to a
       reference point 3; by default these quantities are NaNs;
     + GeodesicLine::SetDistance (and GeodesicLine::SetArc) specify the
       distance (and arc length) to point 3;
     + GeodesicLine::Distance (and GeodesicLine::Arc) return the distance
       (and arc length) to point 3;
     + new methods Geodesic::InverseLine and Geodesic::DirectLine return
       a GeodesicLine with the reference point 3 defined as point 2 of
       the corresponding geodesic calculation;
     + these changes are also included in the C, Java, JavaScript, and
       Python packages.

   * Other changes to the geodesic routines:
     + more accurate solution of the inverse problem when longitude
       difference is close to 180deg (also in C, Fortran, Java,
       JavaScript, Python, MATLAB, and Maxima packages);
     + more accurate calculation of lon2 in the inverse calculation with
       LONG_UNROLL (also in Java, JavaScript, Python packages).

   * Changes to GeodSolve(1) utility:
     + the -I and -D options now specify geodesic line calculation via
       the standard inverse or direct geodesic problems;
     + rename -l flag to -L to parallel the new -I and -D flags (-l is is
       retained for backward compatibility but is deprecated), and
       similarly for RhumbSolve(1);
     + the -F flag (in conjunction with the -I or -D flags) specifies
       that distances read on standard input are fractions of s13 or a13;
     + the -a option now toggles arc mode (noted above);
     + the -w option now toggles longitude first mode (noted above).

   * Changes to Math class:
     + Math::copysign added;
     + add overloaded version of Math::AngDiff which returns the error in
       the difference.  This allows a more accurate treatment of inverse
       geodesic problem when lon12 is close to 180deg;
     + Math::AngRound now converts tiny negative numbers to -0 (instead
       of +0), however -0 is still converted to +0.

   * Add -S and -T options to GeoConvert(1).

   * Add Sphinx documentation for Python package.

   * Samples of wrapping the C++ library, so it's accessible in other
     languages, are given in wrapper/C, wrapper/python, and
     wrapper/matlab.

   * Binary installers for Windows now use Visual Studio 12 2013.

   * Remove top-level pom.xml from release (it was specific to SRI).

   * A reminder: because of the JavaScript changes introduced in version
     1.45, you should remove the following installation directories from
     your system:
     + Windows: ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/doc/scripts
     + Others: ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/share/doc/GeographicLib/scripts