4.2 Release plans - Last chance for comments

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

Unless there are objections, I propose to change the PATCHLEVEL
and other embedded names in the 4.2 CVS tree to be 4.2 patchlevel 0,
and prepare an official distribution source package this weekend.

-rc4 has been out there since 24 January.  It shook out 2 configuration
bugs (libedit on OSX, gcc on alpha) and 1 user interface bug (Pause
behaviour on windows).  IMHO none of these would have been show-stoppers.

My thought is that we would 
1) put the 4.2 release tarball on SourceForge
2) add pointers and update links on the web site
3) let those propagate
4) wait a bit (2 days? a week?)
5) publish the release announcement    (Draft text follows)
 
I was not involved in the mechanics of previous releases,
so maybe there is an well-trodden release path that I am unaware of?


    [DRAFT] Gnuplot version 4.2 release announcement [DRAFT]
    ========================================================

Gnuplot version 4.2 has been under continuous development since the release
of gnuplot version 4.0 in April 2004.  It has been almost 3 years, but we
have put this time to good use.  Gnuplot version 4.2 contains a ton of new
features, support for several new output devices, and improved performance
when plotting large data sets.  For a complete list of new features, see 
the NEWS file that comes with the program.

Major additions include

	* Text strings can be read and manipulated as normal data
	* New interactive terminal based on wxWidgets, pango and cairo
	* New 2D plot styles 'histogram' 'labels' 'image' 'rgbimage'
	* New 3D plot styles 'labels' 'vectors' 'image' 'rgbimage'
	* User control over color definitions and color use in plots
	* Improved font handling and text formatting
	* New syntax to handle string variables and string functions
	* Creation of animated gif sequences

Demo plots illustrating these and other features are online at

	http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo_4.2/

You can download a source tarball for gnuplot version 4.2 from the 
gnuplot development site on SourceForge. Pre-built binaries for
selected platforms will appear presently.

	http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2055


Installation
------------
Installation instructions are available in the source itself; the short
version for linux/unix-like systems is to unpack the tarball and then
build it:
		cd gnuplot-4.2 ; ./configure ; make
test it:
		make check
install it:
		make install


Short list of fixes since the final release candidate 4.2-rc4
-------------------------------------------------------------
- Backport cvs fix to prevent segfaults from empty plots in hidden3d mode
- Better auto-detection of readline support during configuration on OSX
- Support for libgd version 2.0.34 and for changes expected in 2.1.x
- PDF point type 1 now correctly drawn as a + sign
- 'pause mouse' comes closer to working under MSWindows
- Do not do range checking on the cb axis unless the plot actually uses it
- Japanese documentation updated to match final English version
- Fix syntax of configuration test for gcc on alpha
- Initialize colorbox tics earlier (avoids possible scaling error)
- Fix configuration bug affecting placement of x-axis label with subscripts

Known issues
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Installation of the new wxt terminal under OSX and Solaris is problematic
- Plot styles image and rgbimage are marked EXPERIMENTAL; their implementation
  is incomplete and may change in future versions of gnuplot
- MSWindows support for mouse/keyboard events is incomplete

Support
-------
Please report all bugs and installation problems to the bug tracker
on SourceForge:

	http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=2055&atid=102055

There is also an active gnuplot discussion forum on usenet group

	comp.graphics.apps.gnuplot



-- 
Ethan A Merritt            Courier Deliveries: 1959 NE Pacific
Dept of Biochemistry
Health Sciences Building
University of Washington - Seattle WA 98195-7742