Version 4.4.4 released

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

The source tarball, release notes, and user manual for 
gnuplot version 4.4.4 are now available on SourceForge.

Binary installation packages for Windows will follow later
as usual. Please be patient, as these are prepared from the
releases source by a separate set of volunteers.

This release was delayed somewhat by an unexpected flurry
of bug reports + fixes against the development version that
turned out to affect 4.4 as well.

The plan is that this will be the last incremental release
in the 4.4 series.  Whether the next release gets labeled
4.6 or 5.0 is still under discussion.

	Ethan Merritt (sfeam) 
	on behlf of the gnuplot development team


   	           GNUPLOT VERSION 4.4.4
	    ===================================

Version 4.4.4 is an incremental update to the current official release.

A synopsis of changes since the previous patchlevel (version 4.4.3)
is given below and in the NEWS file.  Detailed information is in ChangeLog.

New features, changes and fixes in gnuplot version 4.4.4
========================================================

* NEW boxxyerrors plot style now allows variable color
* NEW splot with pm3d now allows variable rgb color
* NEW "nonuniform matrix" indicates ascii data with explicit x, y
* CHANGE columnhead(N) is a string-valued function, not a keyword
* CHANGE Demarcate plots in svg output using <g id="Plot_#"><title>...
* CHANGE xticlabels() works for binary data files as well as ascii
* CHANGE "set key maxrows" now applies to 3D plots as well as 2D
* CHANGE rewrite installation path rules for TeX files
* FIX wxt terminal should now work on at least some flavors of OSX
* FIX incorrect space allowed for outside left key box
* FIX buffer overflow from enhanced text timefmt tic labels
* FIX correction for offset in epochs when reading in time format "%s"
* FIX discontinuity in defined palette limited by maxcolors
* FIX initialization of svg pattern-fill definitions
* FIX positioning of histogram bars when some data entries are missing
* FIX emf terminal can handle UTF-8 encoding
* FIX User-specified axis tick labels override auto labels in 3D as in 2D
* FIX `plot with labels` failed to skip labels with UNDEFINED coords
* FIX NaN (not a number) implementation for Windows build
* FIX work-around for poor scaling in pdfcairo pattern fill
* FIX segfault if mismatch between palette sizes of successive terminals


		 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.  wxt should (at last!) work on OSX also.

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-4.4.4 ; ./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:  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 all 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.