Announcing release of version 4.4.3

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

The source tarball and user manual (gnuplot.pdf) for version 4.4.3 are
now available on SourceForge.  Windows binaries will appear over the 
next few days.


   	           GNUPLOT VERSION 4.4.3
	    ===================================

Version 4.4.3 is an incremental update to the current official release.

A synopsis of changes since the version 4.4.2 is given below and in the
NEWS file.  Further information is given in ChangeLog.

New features, changes and fixes in gnuplot version 4.4.3
===========================================================

* NEW Implement pan and zoom via mouse wheel.
* NEW set key maxcolumns N maxrows M
* NEW value("varname") returns the value of the named variable
* NEW encoding cp1251 - 8-bit Cyrillic
* CHANGE backport newer emf terminal driver from version 4.5
* FIX better estimation of latex string lengths
* FIX colorbar representation of discrete color palettes is pixel accurate
* FIX NaN initialization and tests working on more (all?) platforms
* FIX configuration script tests for readline+ncurses
* FIX prevent out-of-range boxes from creating degenerate ghosts on the border
* FIX missing alpha channel flag for pdfcairo terminal
* FIX font initialization in windows terminal

		 NOTE TO PACKAGERS AND TESTERS 
		===============================

We strongly encourage you to build, test, and package the new cairo-based
terminals. These are pngcairo and pdfcairo for output to file, and wxt as
the default interactive terminal.

This introduces dependencies on
	libwxgtk2
	libpangocairo
	libpango
	libcairo

Of course the terminals (output modes) used by previous gnuplot versions
are also still available, including png output based on libgd and
interactive output using X11.

Demo plots illustrating these and other features are online at

	http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo/

You can download a source tarball for gnuplot version 4.4.3 from the 
gnuplot development site on SourceForge.

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


		          OTHER NOTES
		===============================

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-4.4.3 ; ./configure ; make
test it:
		make check
install it:
		make install

Pay careful attention to the output of the ./configure script.
It may indicate that some output drivers have been omitted because the
necessary support libraries were not found.  In general you need to have
previously installed the "*-devel-*" versions of these libraries. 


Known issues
------------

- OSX:  The wxt terminal does not work. Alpha-channel support in aquaterm
requires aquaterm version 1.0.1, available from http://aquaterm.sourceforge.net
Aquaterm itself may not work on 64-bit systems.

- External support library libgd version 2.0.36 introduces a new method
of font selection using the fontconfig utitily.  However, it does not work
properly without a patch to the upstream libgd source that has not yet made
it into packaged versions.   Here it is:
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
--- gd-2.0.36/gdft.c    2008-03-09 16:05:52.000000000 -0700
+++ gd-2.0.36-mod/gdft.c        2009-05-20 20:22:13.000000000 -0700
@@ -1661,7 +1661,7 @@ static char * font_path(char **fontpath,
 BGD_DECLARE(int) gdFTUseFontConfig(int flag)
 {
 #ifdef HAVE_LIBFONTCONFIG
-       fontConfigFlag = 1;
+       fontConfigFlag = flag;
        return 1;
 #else
        return 0;
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

- The MS Windows terminal device sometimes draws with a dashed line
when it should draw with a solid line. (Tracker item 1952364).
Also it doesn't yet fully support alpha-channel output.


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

Development
-----------
Gnuplot development is quite active. The development branch on SourceForge
contains preliminary implementations of many new features.  The development
branch is currently identified as version 4.5.
Feedback and contributions of code are very welcome.