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Announcement, second draft
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From: Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...> - 2004-04-15 17:37:55
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OK, guys, here's the second edition for your perusal:
GNUPLOT - The Next Generation
=============================
This is the official release announcement for gnuplot 4.0.0, the first
major version number upgrade of gnuplot in more than a decade.
G N U P L O T
Version 4.0 patchlevel 0
last modified Thu Apr 15 13:25:08 CEST 2004
It has taken a long time, but the gnuplot developers sincerely hope
the result was worth waiting for. See below for a list of changes
since the previous release, 3.7 patchlevel 3, also known as 3.7.3.
THE FAQ
=======
An updated version of the gnuplot FAQ is available. It can be found
at the following locations:
http://www.gnuplot.info/faq.html
ftp://ftp.gnuplot.info/pub/gnuplot/faq/faq.txt
All main distribution sites in the faq/ subdirectory.
Volunteers are encouraged to contribute --- the FAQ itself explains
how.
GNUPLOT AND GIF IMAGES
======================
An important note to all who wish to create GIF images with gnuplot:
* Gnuplot requires the gd library from http://www.boutell.com/gd/ to *
* create gif output. Note that the use of this code may subject your *
* organisation to a charge of willful patent infringement (as stated *
* by UNISYS) unless you are in possession of a UNISYS license. *
* *
* The UNISYS patent covers the LZW technology which is used to create *
* gifs. To our knowledge, only gd library version 1.3 and 1.4 are free *
* of LZW code and should therefore be used with gnuplot (unless you have *
* a license from Unisys to use LZW code, in which case version 1.2 and 1.5 *
* is fine, too). The binaries provided here have been built with version *
* 1.3. Version 1.6+ cannot be used because support for GIF has been *
* removed altogether. *
The relevant patents will expire relatively soon, but it's quite
unclear right now whether the capability to write GIF files will be
restored to the GD library.
As all GIF-creating versions of gd library seem to have been taken off
www.boutell.com, we are providing gd library versions 1.3 and 1.4 at
the gnuplot distribution sites [1]. Should any legal problems arise,
we will remove this software.
The PNG image format is a strongly recommended alternative to gif.
See [2].
DISTRIBUTION
============
By the time you receive this, copies of gnuplot-4.0.0.tar.gz
should be at the official repositories. Binary versions for
various non-Unix platforms will be made available in the same
places. Please allow a couple of days for these distributions
to appear.
A diffs file relative to gnuplot-3.7.3 will not be made --- it would
be larger than the source code tarball itself.
All distribution archives are signed with a public key which is
available from public key servers. For more information, see the
README and PGPKEYS file at the distribution sites.
DISTRIBUTION SITES
==================
NORTH AMERICA
Anonymous ftp to ftp.gnuplot.info:
ftp://ftp.gnuplot.info/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-4.0.0.tar.gz
Alternatively, you can use your web browser to get gnuplot
from the gnuplot web pages at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot/
AUSTRALIA:
From the AARNet Mirror Project:
ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gnuplot/
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gnuplot/
This site is not accessible outside Australia/New Zealand.
Anonymous ftp to ftp.cc.monash.edu.au:
ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-4.0.0.tar.gz
EUROPE:
Anonymous ftp to ftp.irisa.fr:
ftp://ftp.irisa.fr/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-4.0.0.tar.gz
Anonymous ftp to ftp.ucc.ie:
ftp://ftp.ucc.ie/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-4.0.0.tar.gz
OTHER:
The CTAN mirror network has gnuplot in its "graphics" area:
http://www.ctan.org/
Source and binary distributions for the Amiga might
become available on Aminet:
http://ftp.wustl.edu/~aminet/ (and its mirrors)
Mac OS X binaries might become available from the
http://homepage.mac.com/gnuplot/ at some stage. More
likely, though, they'll end up on the main gnuplot
distribution sites given above.
What's New
==========
The list of changes is immense this time, so only the highlights
can be given here. For the full details, see the NEWS file or the
ChangeLog, or look into the online version of the documentation at
http://www.gnuplot.info/docs/gnuplot.html#What_is_New_in_Version_4.0
You'll quite probably have to (re-)read large parts of the
documentation to learn all the details that have changed.
Major changes visible to users:
-------------------------------
o Global Command syntax change: instead of 'set no...' it's now
'unset ...'.
o Commands 'set data style', 'set function style' and 'set linestyle'
changed to 'set style {data|function|line}, respectively.
o Colour-coded plots in 3D and simulated 2D through the new 'pm3d'
plotting style.
o Boxes drawn by plotstyles 'boxes', 'candlesticks' and boxed errorbar
styles can be filled with solid colors or hatch patterns.
o New plot style 'with filledcurves' to fill an area defined by a curve
in solid colour.
o Windows, X11, OS/2 and GGI interactive graphical terminals now support
interaction with the plot window by mouse and hotkeys.
o The "enhanced" mode has been generalized from PostScript to some
other terminal drivers.
o 'set hidden3d' mode accepts non-grid data and hides them behind gridded
surfaces plotted with them.
o Several new terminal drivers: EMF, PDF, SVG, GGI, epslatex, aqua.
o New function to query if a user-defined variable exists.
o PNG and JPEG terminals using the GD library support libfreetype to
use true-type fonts.
o 'set label' can output a point symbol the comment refers to, and the
text itself can be rotated by arbitrary angles (on some terminals).
o The color of text elements can be changed.
o 'set size ratio' now affects 3D plots, too.
o The 'dgrid3d' can be switched between thin-plate splines and
the older weighted averaging method, at compile time.
o Some terminals now support 'koi8-r', ISO-Latin-2 and CP-852
encoding of user input.
o Windows gnuplot recognizes the Unix/X11 style '-persist' option,
and supports changing linewidth by core gnuplot commands.
o A native compilation option of gnuplot for Mac OS X is now part of
the mainline source, using the 'aquaterm' driver [3].
o Datafile comment character, column separator and decimal sign
can be changed.
o Arrows can be drawn with relative coordinates for the head, and the
heads can be filled.
o Allows 'set timefmt' independantly for each axis, and supports new
'%s' format for seconds-since-1970 input.
o Even more documentation misprints have been fixed, thanks to
Shigeharu TAKENO
Internal changes:
-----------------
o Reorganization of the entire source tree.
o Broken into considerably more source files than before.
o Large sets of related global variables have been collected into
relatively few global data structures (the 'axis' array and a
global 'key' data structure, e.g.).
o The gnuplot_x11 driver no longer is installed in the PATH, to
avoid confusion about it.
o Scaling and ticking of time/date axes respects the fact that
12 and 60 are not the same 10 or 100 much better.
And, obviously, more bug fixes than could possibly fit into this
narrow margin...
THE CONTRIB SECTION
===================
An improved gnuplot mode for X/Emacs by Bruce Ravel available from
http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel/software/gnuplot-mode/Welcome.html.
has been incorporated into to the gnuplot source tree.
CREDITS
=======
The gnuplot team would like to thank all who have contributed to this
release through discussions, suggestions, bug reports, and patches,
on Usenet and mailing lists. Special thanks go to Juergen von Hagen
who maintained the gnuplot FAQ for a while. To Ethan Merritt and
Petr Mikulik for lots of work all over the place, and to Johannes
Zellner for his work on X11 support for mouse and pm3d.
-Thomas Williams-
-Lars Hecking-
-Hans-Bernhard Broeker-
FOOTNOTES
=========
[1] The gif terminal driver requires third party software. Because the
version of gd library currently at http://www.boutell.com/gd/ does
NOT create gif images, we are providing gd library version 1.3 and 1.4
at from the gnuplot distribution sites.
[2] the png terminal driver requires third party software. The png graphics
library and zlib can be downloaded from
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
and
http://www.gzip.org/zlib/
respectively. They are also available from the gnuplot distribution
sites.
[3] The aquaterm terminal driver requires third party software.
AquaTerm and libaquaterm can be downloaded from
http://aquaterm.sourceforge.net
--
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (br...@ph...)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.
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