Release announcement - gnuplot version 4.6.1

SourceForge Headquarters 1320 Columbia Street Suite 310 San Diego, CA 92101 +1 (858) 422-6466

Release 4.6.1 is now available for download from SourceForge.
As usual the initial release is a source tarball.
Pre-built binaries for Windows and other platforms will come 
later when/if they are prepared by their respective volunteers.

The full release announcement is appended below.

	happy gnuplotting,

		Ethan (gnuplot development team)

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

		   GNUPLOT VERSION 4.6.1
	    ===================================

This is an incremental release of gnuplot version 4.6 containing various bug
fixes and a couple of new features.

A synopsis of changes since the previous patchlevel (version 4.6.0)
is given below and in the NEWS file.  Detailed information is in ChangeLog.

New features, changes and fixes since gnuplot version 4.6.0
===========================================================

* NEW syntax hints inside Emacs gnuplot-mode
* NEW support tabulation (set table) of pixel values from image plot styles
* NEW support tabulation of variable color column
* CHANGE emf output modified for better compatibility with MS Office programs
* CHANGE canvas terminal loads appropriate font file for UTF-8 encoding
* CHANGE skip execution of empty iteration loops in set and do commands
* CHANGE build scripts modified to accommodate automake 1.12
* CHANGE new policy: objects given in screen coords are not clipped to graph
* CHANGE Draw the z-axis label at a fixed distance to the left of the z-axis
* CHANGE "unset object N" succeeds even if there is currently no object N
* FIX margin space required for rotated axis tic labels
* FIX check for NaN values in binary input
* FIX backslash handling in enhanced text strings
* FIX cairo terminals sometimes lost the line segment before a polygon
* FIX interactive toggle of multiplots in svg
* FIX failure to balance {} if an input file did not end with a newline
* FIX strlen() and substring operators correctly handle UTF-8
* FIX initialization of history when configured --with-readline=bsd
* FIX set term cairolatex pdf mono
* FIX palette-related corruption in some cairolatex output
* FIX preserve number of active call arguments across a nested call command
* FIX wxt terminal mutex protecting execution of the command list
* FIX apply clipping to the interior fill of circles and ellipses
* FIX corruption of weights used for plotting with smooth acsplines
* FIX skip columnheader line when applying "every" filter
* FIX handle out-of-range pm3d values when cb axis is set to log scale
* FIX top/bottom color distinction in hidden3d when not using palette/RGB colors
* FIX allow toggling on/off of more than 10 plots in windows terminal
* FIX color printing from windows terminal
* FIX set term win font ",<size>"
* FIX incorrect return for acos(x) when imag(x) > 0 (bug present since v3.7)
      incorrect return for asin(x) when imag(x) > 0 (bug in 4.4.4, 4.6.0)
      incorrect asinh(x) when real(x) < 0 && imag(x) == 0 (bug in 4.4.4, 4.6.0)
* FIX keep sufficient precision in canvas and svg coords to report time in msec
* FIX the input buffer was not always extended correctly inside a { clause }
* FIX some cairolatex set_color requests were being ignored
* FIX calculated value of kernel density mean and sigma
* FIX emf terminal dashed line support

		 NOTES TO PACKAGERS AND TESTERS 
		===============================

Configuration options for interactive use
-----------------------------------------

The 4.6 source code supports three primary cross-platform output modes
in addition to several platform-specific modes.

1) Cairo/pango/wxWidgets
   These terminals were introduced in version 4.4 and are now the most
   stable and full-featured option.  This set of terminals includes
   - pngcairo, pdfcairo, epscairo, and cairolatex for output to a file
   - wxt for interactive display
   This is the default configuration, but requires prior installation of
   libcairo, libpango, libcairo, libwxgtk, and related support libraries
   To disable these terminals:
       ./configure --disable-wxt --without-cairo

2) Qt
   The new qt terminal supports interactive display with menu-driven
   output to png, svg or pdf.
   Requires libqt version >= 4.5
       ./configure --enable-qt

3) X11 (the "classic" interactive interface)
   This used to be the preferred interactive interface, but the newer
   wxt and qt terminals offer nicer output and a wider range of features.

Options for output to files
---------------------------

Of course the terminals (output modes) present in previous gnuplot versions
are also still available. These include, among many more obscure options:
- png/jpeg/gif output via libgd
- PostScript
- Many flavors of TeX/LaTeX output, including TikZ and ConTeXt (new)
- Bitmapped output to support many older devices (e.g. HP deskjet, epson,
  seiko printers, pbm bitmapped graphics files) is available if needed
  but is no longer configured in by default.  Note that the bitmap code
  copyright is more restrictive than the rest of the gnuplot code.
      ./configure --with-bitmap-terminals

Options for generating interactive plots for web display
--------------------------------------------------------

- Mouseable output for display on the web can be created using either 
  the canvas terminal (HTML5 2D canvas element) or the svg terminal.
  Both allow zooming, toggling plot elements on/off, and user-scriptable
  hot keys.

Online demo plots
-----------------

Demo plots illustrating new and old features are online at

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

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

Installation
------------

You can download a source tarball for gnuplot version 4.6.1 from the 
gnuplot development site on SourceForge.

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

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-4.6.1 ; ./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
------------

- Mac OSX ships with a terminal input library that appears to be GNU
libreadline, but isn't really.  The program tries to cope with this, but
you may get better results by configuring gnuplot to use either its own
built-in readline routines or the real GNU libreadline.

- The gnuplot build system is not very good at figuring out where to find
or install LaTeX-related files.  This can affect use of the new lua/tikz
and ConTeXt terminals.

- You can configure support for both wxt and qt into the same gnuplot
executable, but only one of these two output modes can be used in any
given gnuplot session.

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 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 current
development branch is labeled version 4.7, but will be released either as
4.8 or 5.0.  Feedback and contributions of code are very welcome.

Release announcement - gnuplot version 4.6.1

A portable, multi-platform, command-line driven graphing utility

Release announcement - gnuplot version 4.6.1