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[Plplot-cvs] SF.net SVN: plplot:[12728] trunk
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From: <ai...@us...> - 2013-11-21 02:25:03
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Revision: 12728
http://sourceforge.net/p/plplot/code/12728
Author: airwin
Date: 2013-11-21 02:24:57 +0000 (Thu, 21 Nov 2013)
Log Message:
-----------
Completely update NEWS file to point to sources of news about PLplot.
Modified Paths:
--------------
trunk/NEWS
Added Paths:
-----------
trunk/OLD-NEWS
Modified: trunk/NEWS
===================================================================
--- trunk/NEWS 2013-11-21 01:37:53 UTC (rev 12727)
+++ trunk/NEWS 2013-11-21 02:24:57 UTC (rev 12728)
@@ -1,597 +1,19 @@
-Late news first
+This file contains no PLplot news. Instead it points to the places where
+you can find such news.
-************************* 5.1.0 NEWS ***************************************
+For short news items about PLplot stretching back to
+2001 look at http://sourceforge.net/p/plplot/news/?source=navbar
-Important Changes to Existing Features
+For current release notes see README.release
-The Windows port of PLplot has been completely refurbished. PLplot now
-runs on Windows 98 (and perhaps even Windows 95 although that is
-untested), Windows NT, and Windows 2000. See
-plplot/sys/win32/msdev/README.TXT and
-plplot/sys/win32/msdev/INSTALL.TXT for details. Please direct all
-questions about this Windows port to Olof Svensson.
-
-The examples were extensively expanded for each front end to be the
-union of the previous results for all front ends. For example, you
-should now expect to get the same results for the 10 pages of the
-contouring (ninth) example regardless of whether you are running that
-example from Tcl, C, Python, Java (and eventually C++, Fortran, and
-Perl).
+For older release notes stretching back to 5.5.0 see OLD-README.release.
-We have finished converting all Python examples to use the Numeric
-module (from the Numpy project) wherever possible. This module allows
-high-level array manipulations at C speeds that are quite useful in
-preparing data to be plotted. The xw??.py examples are no longer
-stand-alone scripts. Instead, they are now organized as modules that
-are imported into python scripts such as pythondemos.py or prova.py.
+For still older release announcements, see
-API change:
+http://plplot.sourceforge.net/announce/announce-plplot-5.3.1.xhtml
+http://plplot.sourceforge.net/announce/announce-plplot-5.3.0.xhtml
+http://plplot.sourceforge.net/announce/announce-plplot-5.2.1.html
+http://plplot.sourceforge.net/announce/announce-plplot-5.1.0.html
-plxormod now returns a status.
-
-plssub now no longer has a forced page advance inside it (which was
-confusing some drivers). More specific page initialization is used
-inside of plssub instead. If this change causes you some problems, see
-the examples for the proper way to terminate pages and sub-pages.
-
-We no longer support the variety of make commands on the non-GNU/Linux
-unices. Instead, we now only support the GNU version of make which is
-well documented and which can be downloaded from
-ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/make.
-
-The DocBook API chapter (and the man pages and Octave help built from
-that chapter) now have complete documentation of the meaning of the
-function parameters. The overall documentation and our website content
-have been improved as well.
-
-Important New Features
-
-A new cgm (Computer Graphics Metafile) driver has been added. This
-relies on libcd.a which is not maintained any more. Nevertheless
-libcd.a is a free library that works well and does its job so for our
-cgm user's convenience we have put a copy of the cd1.3.tar.gz tarball
-for building this library from source in our file release area. Our
-tests indicate the cgm driver is now stable.
-
-Dynamical loading of device drivers. We have 29 (!) different devices
-for output plots, but only one of those is selected by the user for a
-given plot. Thus, dynamic loading of device drivers makes your
-executables substantially smaller. Caveats: Your Unix must support
-shared libraries (this happens automatically for most Linux
-distributions), xwin and tk drivers are static-only for now (until we
-arrange for the PLplot library itself to be dynamically loaded from
-the Tcl/Tk front-end). Use the --enable-dyndrivers configure option to
-get access to dynamic loading of device drivers.
-
-We now have an experimental Java front end. The PLplot API accessible
-from Java is still incomplete, but it is large enough currently to do
-all planned examples other than x16.java and x18.java. See
-plplot/examples/java/README.javademos for directions about how to get
-access to the Java front end for PLplot.
-
-We now have a new tk (ntk) driver (--enable-ntk) whose goal is to
-provide the tk driver functionality using a simpler, cleaner
-design. This is "a work in progress" because its functionality,
-although working, is still quite limited compared to the traditional
-tk driver.
-
-We now have the beginnings of a Pyqt GUI for PLplot thanks to
-Alessandro Mirone. See examples/python/README.pythondemos for
-directions about how to access it.
-
-We now have an experimental plimage function for PLplot thanks (again)
-to Alessandro Mirone. Try the experimental x20c example to see how to
-work with images in PLplot at the moment, but note the plimage API may
-change in the future.
-
-Important Bug fixes
-
-Interactive color palettes now work for the plframe Tk GUI. This
-important feature allows you to interactively adjust the cmap0
-(discrete) and cmap1 (continuous) colors for a particular plot.
-
-Remaining Important Bugs
-
-The shaded 3D plots (see Example 8) have problems with the edges of
-hidden shaded regions. Our judgement is this donated plotsh3d code is
-too difficult to fix and should be completely replaced. Any
-volunteers? Meanwhile, with Example 8 we do get a taste of the nice
-effects you can have with 3D shaded plots.
-
-There is no page control for the plframe widget for multi-page plots
-in 5.1.0. This has now been fixed in CVS and will get into the next
-release.
-
-Have fun with this latest stable release of PLplot!
-
-Alan W. Irwin for the PLplot core team, 2002 January 31
-
-************************* 5.0.4 NEWS **********************************
-
-Important Changes:
-
-(1) Default orientation for the ljii, ljiip, psc, ps, and pstex drivers has
-been rotated from seascape (upside-down landscape) by 180 deg to landscape.
-With this change no special 180 deg latex rotations will be required to get
-true landscape mode (top of the plot on the left of the page as opposed to
-on the right of the page for seascape mode). If you still require seascape
-for some reason for these drivers, use the -ori 2. command-line option or
-else use plsdiori(2.) or plsetopt("ori", "2.").
-
-(2) The installation location for examples has been changed to
-$prefix/lib/plplot<ver>/examples to be in better conformance with the FHS.
-
-Important Bug fixes:
-
-(1) Many improvements to the octave front end.
-
-(2) Many improvements to the xfig driver.
-
-(3) If the overall aspect ratio is changed by the -geometry, -a, or -portrait
-options or else by the combination of the -ori 1 and -freeaspect options, the
-character aspect ratio remains unaffected. For example, when the overall
-aspect ratio is changed now, circular symbols remain circular rather than
-turning into ellipses as in the old code.
-
-(4) Software pattern fills now rotate correctly with the rest of the plot
-when the -ori option is used. This fix affects all drivers (e.g., xwin,
-psc) which do not handle their own pattern fills. (Previously the rotation
-angle for software pattern fills was mistakenly doubled by two calls to the
-orientation transformation routine.)
-
-Important New Features:
-
-(1) Portrait mode. Use the -portrait option on the command line or else
-plsetopt("portrait", "") to get this option which only currently affects the
-ljii, ljiip, ps, psc, and pstex drivers. This option is especially useful
-for yplot, the yorick front-end to PLplot. yplot previously maintained
-separate (==> hard-to-maintain and buggy) portrait versions of the psc, ps,
-and ljiip drivers. Those will no longer be necessary with this PLplot
-core change, and in fact portrait mode is now available for a much wider
-range of drivers.
-
-(2) -drvopt command-line option (or else use plsetopt("drvopt","option")).
-This allows setting options for particular drivers. For example, the
--drvopt text option for the psc or ps driver allows use of Adobe fonts (This
-is poorly documented currently, but for now see notes in ps.c for more
-details).
-
-(3) New pstex driver. This is not currently documented, but there is post
-from João Cardoso on plplot_devel
-(http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/10834/2001/4/50/5536095/) that gives
-the recipe (ignore the configuration stuff and start with the ./x01c
-command). The idea is to emulate the pstex output of the xfig application
-so that latex can be used to directly process the file output from the
-PLplot pstex driver.
-
-Have fun with this latest stable release of PLplot!
-
-Alan W. Irwin
-
-************************* 5.0.3 NEWS **************************************
-
-
-The important changes are as follows:
-
-(1) General PNG and JPEG drivers have been added which are based on the
-libgd library (available for Unix/Linux/Mac/Windows). These drivers
-encourage the use of PLplot for web applications because the PNG and JPEG
-formats are so favoured for the web. We classify these two drivers as
-late-beta and we are sufficiently confident of them that we configure them
-by default if you have the appropriate headers and libraries installed from
-libgd, libpng, libjpeg, and zlib. (You need at least libgd-1.7 to obtain
-good PNG images, and at least libgd-1.8 to obtain JPEG images under PLplot.)
-For more information on libgd and the additional required libraries please
-visit http://www.boutell.com/gd/.
-
-(2) The GNUSVGA driver (see plplot/sys/dos/djgpp) has been rewritten
-to use DJGPP V2+ and GRX V2+. The improved driver adds: a cross hair mode; a
-locate mode; double buffering; and an XOR mode to the "screen" driver, all
-of which now give the driver most functions of the XWIN driver. It also
-fixes up: handling of key and mouse events; colormap setting with "-bg"
-switch; and now allows non-fatal/ non-volatile switching between graphics
-and text mode (i.e. it no longer clobbers the computer, and now preserves the
-screen). Additionally (and optionally) the DJGPP driver family now includes
-support for TIFF, BMP, and JPG drivers, and the ability to do "hot key"
-screen-dumps of the screen images to these formats.
-
-(3) Octave is a mostly Matlab compatible high-level language intended for
-numerical computations. An octave front end has been available for some
-years for PLplot-4.99 and has, in fact, been maintained as a Debian package.
-However, this PLplot 5.0.3 release is the first attempt to integrate the
-octave front end with PLplot-5. See the README INSTALL USAGE and FGA
-(frequently given answers) files in bindings/octave to find out how to use
-this front end. Recently, an absolute octave newbie (AWI) was able to get
-all the demos mentioned in INSTALL to work interactively for a Debian potato
-system. Nevertheless, we classify this version of the front end as mid to
-late beta because it has not been tested for a wide variety of environments
-yet. We would welcome reports for this front end.
-
-(4) An experimental Perl front end is just getting underway for PLplot. This
-is an exciting project because it adds an important web-scripting
-environment to PLplot. Usually, documentation trails code, but in this case
-we have the unusual situation where we have parsed our API documentation
-chapter (written in DocBook/XML) to create Perl wrappers for the common
-PLplot API. With this start we have been able to create the demonstration
-Perl script x01.pl which produces identical results to the standard x01c
-demo (that was written in C). For instructions on how to get the Perl
-binding to work, read bindings/perl5/README. More perl script demos are in
-the works, and we welcome your participation (via the plplot-devel mailing
-list, subscribe at http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=2915) in helping to
-develop this front end .
-
-(5) A GNOME-compatible driver has been written for PLplot. At this point,
-the driver is being rapidly developed with many exciting interactive
-capabilities being considered. If you want to get in on the development of
-this driver we urge you to subscribe to the plplot-devel mailing list (see
-http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=2915). We classify this driver as
-alpha because the interactive features are not complete, but already it is
-stable enough to view most of the demonstrations without problems. If you
-want to try this for yourself, use --enable-gnome when you configure PLplot,
-and for any demo specify gnome as the driver.
-
-(6) Many other small changes. The important ones include the following:
-
-(a) A test script. After you have built and installed the demo programmes
-(go to $prefix/share/doc/plplot/examples and execute make cdemos in the c
-directory, fdemos in the f77 directory, cxxdemos in the c++ directory) then
-plplot-test.sh will generate all possible postscript file results for all
-demos. (Use the --help option to explore other file driver possibilities.)
-This script is an excellent way to test that you have built everything
-properly on your system.
-
-(b) A plplot-config configuration script to help you build your PLplot
-applications. Do plplot-config --help to learn how to use it.
-
-(b') We have changed a library name. The matrix library core name is now
-libtclmatrix. A d suffix is applied to the name (just as for all other
-libraries) if the library is built with --with-double=yes configured. If
-you are using the plplot-config script to help link your applications, then
-this library name change should be transparent to you.
-
-(c) Added plshades routine to make life much easier for generating
-continuously shaded plots. See x16c for a demonstration.
-
-(d) Small change in exclusion API for shade plots. (If you are not
-excluding regions of your shade plots this does not affect you.) For an
-example of the new exclusion API for plshades see x16c.c. The excluded
-annulus now actually is smooth--a nice improvement. See plshades.c for the
-changes to the plshade exclusion API.
-
-(e) Added argument list processing for xw??.py demos.
-
-(f) Bug fix. Clip was not being applied to fills, now is.
-
-(g) x10.tcl and x15.tcl added to demos.
-
-(h) float --> PLFLT throughout the code. This change exterminates much of
-the single precision that was contaminating the code (with consequent large
-roundoff errors that differed from machine to machine) when
---with-double=yes is configured. Comparison of 32-bit and 64-bit results
-for x??c now indicates identical postscript files except for date (of
-course) and the x05c and x16c examples (which still must have some
-single-precision contaminating them somewhere.) Other demos still need to be
-checked for single-precision contamination in addition to the fundamental
-x??c examples.
-
-(i) Package relocatability put in. This is essential for building debs and
-rpm's.
-
-(j) Assorted documentation improvements including adding a Chapter entitled
-"Notes for each Operating System that We Support". So far only filled with
-somewhat sparse information on Unix/Linux. If you want to contribute some
-documentation for other platforms, feel free to send the material to AWI,
-and he will include it.
-
-Reports are welcome (especially using plplot-test.sh) for all OS/hardware
-combinations. It is only through such reports (and patches that work for
-you) that we can improve our cross-platform support.
-
-Alan W. Irwin
-
-************************* 5.0.2 NEWS *************************************
-
-Note we also have some innovation in the new release as well as bug fixing.
-
-(1) The python xw??.py examples should now work right out of the box
-without fooling around with PYTHONPATH.
-
-(2) Install file locations now conform to the FHS. So, for example,
-you will find the examples installed at
-$prefix/share/doc/plplot/examples.
-
-(3) The content of the documentation source has been greatly improved
-from 5.0.1. We have now completely finished going through the doc
-directory for several generations of notes on various topics and
-incorporated all this material (with substantial updates and
-expansions) into our docbook source. The result is new docbook
-sections/chapters on devices, driver functions, plrender and
-metafiles, familying, interactive output devices, color, and C and
-fortran bindings. We have added API sections that are specialized to C
-and fortran. We have also added a bibliography and reorganized the
-material so that all the reference material (bibliography and API
-sections) appear at the back of the document. We have now removed
-virtually all the old files in doc so there is no longer the potential
-of getting confused with these older generations of documentation.
-
-We don't anticipate the addition of too many more chapters or sections
-to the documentation, but some refinement of the existing
-chapters/sections still needs to be done. If you are interested in
-helping with this effort, please contact yours truly
-(ir...@be...).
-
-(4) Our DocBook source can be built into PLplot documentation in a
-variety of formats (currently html, dvi, postscript, pdf, info, and
-man). Our CVS does not have these files because they are generated
-rather than source files. However, you can always get the latest forms
-of these results from http://www.plplot.org/resources/docbook-manual/,
-and for your convenience we have also bundled these results into the
-doc directory of the 5.0.2 tarball.
-
-Please send bug reports, comments, and questions to the PLplot list,
-and have fun (and profit) with the new 5.0.2 release of plplot!
-
-Alan
-
-************************* 5.0.1 NEWS ***************************************
-
-Note we also have some innovation in the new release as well as bug fixing.
-
-(1) The documentation building process has been changed completely over to
-DocBook 4.1 XML. To see the nice html, postscript, pdf, dvi, info, and man
-results of this effort, please look at
-http://www.plplot.org/resources/docbook-manual/
-
-(2) The content of the documentation source has been greatly improved from
-previous versions. However, more work is always needed on documentation
-content, and if you have an interest in helping out with this aspect of
-plplot, please contact yours truly (Alan W. Irwin).
-
-(3) The header file style has been changed to be similar to that of X. That
-is every header file reference in source should have the prefix plplot, e.g.,
-
-#include "plplot/plConfig.h"
-
-This gives much less potential for nameclashes, if the headers are stored in,
-e.g., /usr/include/plplot. It also means that the -I parameter stays the
-same as it was before on the compile line.
-
-(4) The library names have been changed so they are in a more consistent style
-now that gives more protection against nameclashes. All library tags
-(suffixes to the core name of libplplot, libplmatrix, etc.) are
-now gone except for d for double precision and nothing for single precision
-or the libplmatrix library (which is always single precision even if
-you have configured double precision). To indicate what the library names
-that were used to build plrender, execute the installed
-$prefix/bin/plplot_linkage. On my current system this emits the following
-line:
--L/usr/local/plplot/lib -lplplotd -lplmatrix -litk3.1 -ltk8.2 -litcl3.1
--ltcl8.2 -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11 -lvga -ldl -lm -lg2c -Wl,-rpath
--Wl,/usr/local/plplot/lib
-
-Your system (if it isn't Debian potato) will have a different link line
-emitted by $prefix/bin/plplot_linkage. That is the one to use!
-
-(5) Python now works! (at least in widgetless mode). Configure python (which
-happens by default), and try out the new widgetless examples, xw??.py.
-You will like them! These examples all require double precision. Eventually,
-we plan to add Tk widget capabilities to these examples. Any help
-would be appreciated.
-
-(6) Fortran now works with double precision and Linux! (It always worked
-well with single precision before, but it is nice to have this generality.)
-
-Please send bug reports, comments, and questions to this list, and
-have fun (and profit) with the new 5.0.1 release of plplot!
-
-Alan
-
-************************* 5.0.0 NEWS ***************************************
-
-Greetings to all,
-
-And you thought it would /NEVER/ happen. :-).
-
-I am pleased to announce that PLplot version 5.0.0 has been released.
-The rest of this email will attempt to explain exactly what this means
-in more detail.
-
-Now for a little background. We are done with the 4.99 x, x=abc...
-business, as well as the dated snapshots. Dated snapshots are being
-replaced by providing anonymous cvs access through plplot.org. So
-anyone who wants to track day-to-day development, or follow progress
-on their patch submissions, etc, will be able to do that by using cvs.
-
-In addition to that, we will provide real releases which are supposed
-to be stable, or at least to get stable over a short time. The
-releasing naming conventions will follow the Linux tradition. Even
-releases are supposed to be stable, and only bug fixes and
-stabilization patches will be applied to these. Thus, 5.0.0 is the
-first in this strain. If people find minor little nits that need
-fixing, this will result in 5.0.1, 5.0.2, etc. We hope it doesn`t get
-too far... Ongoing feature development will proceed in the 5.1
-strain.
-
-The release and versioning business is coordinated with cvs in the
-following manner. Stable releases go on a branch. Ongoing
-development continues on the cvs head. To be really cvs technical, we
-provide a branch point tag, a branch tag, and release tags. So, to be
-totally explicit, I did the following operations today when preparing
-the 5.0.0 release:
-
-1) cvs tag bp_v5_0
-2) cvs rtag -b -r bp_v5_0 v5_0 plplot
-3) cvs tag v5_0_0
-4) cvs export -r v5_0_0 plplot
-5) mv plplot/ plplot-5.0.0
-6) tar cvzf plplot-5.0.0.tar.gz plplot-5.0.0/
-
-Step 1 labels the state of the repository at the point in time when we
-fork the 5.0 release branch. The name of the branch point for the 5.0
-release, is bp_v5_0. Step 2 creates a cvs "branch tag" for referring
-to the head of this branch. The name of this tag is v5_0. Step 3
-creates a tag for the specific release 5.0.0, with tag name v5_0_0.
-In the current case, there were no changes made between any of these
-steps, so steps 1, 2, and 3 all refer to the same versions of the
-files. But as we move on from here, people who wish to participate in
-stabilizing the 5.0 branch will need to check out the head of this
-branch via:
-
- cvs co -r v5_0 plplot
-
-Then they can do stabilization oriented development, submit context
-diffs, and the core team will apply these patches, and eventually at
-various points along the way, we will tag v5_0_1, v5_0_2, etc. So,
-the thing to understand here is that "v5_0" is the branch tag. It is
-a floating reference, which alwasy points to the head of this branch.
-Non branch tags just refer to static file versions, labelling a single
-specific collection of file versions for all of time.
-
-Henceforth, the main line of deveopment, which we will call 5.1,
-proceeds on the cvs head. There is no branch tag for this. To see
-the ongoing develoment work on the 5.1 branch, just do:
-
- cvs co plplot
-
-Use update to track ongoing work, etc. We may possibly tag a few
-interesting points along the way as v5_1_0, v5_1_1, etc, but there
-will not be a branch tag for this. Eventually, when 5.1 development
-seems to have run its course, we will fork another branch for 5.2,
-making a new branch point tag bp_v5_2, a branch tag v5_2 to refer to
-the head of the branch holding the 5.2 release strain, and occasional
-tags for specific 5.2.x releases.
-
-Hopefully that is comprehensible to people with a cvs background. See
-the CVS faq for more background. We`ll try to put this kind of info
-on the web site somewhere as we get better organized.
-
-Anyway, in addition to the cvs access mechanisms described above, we
-also are providing the 5.0.0 release as a .tar.gz file. Steps 4, 5,
-and 6 show exactly how this was created, guaranteeing that the
-plplot-5.0.0.tar.gz file contains exactly the file versions that were
-tagged as v5_0_0 in step 3, but omitting the CVS control information.
-This tarball release is appropriate for people who just want the code
-in a packaged form, and aren`t interested in tracking the cvs
-development specifically, or even in using cvs to fetch identified
-versions. This file has been uploaded to the plplot.org ftp site.
-You can get it via:
-
- /<EMAIL: PROTECTED>:/pub/plplot/plplot-5.0.0.tar.gz
-
-Eventually we will get the http://www.plplot.org web site updated to reflect
-this, and also figure out how to identify this file release on the
-sourceforge.net project page for plplot. Someone will post messages
-about that as we progress in these other areas.
-
-Anyway, the bottom line is, right now you can get PLplot 5.0.0, either
-by anonymous ftp, or by anonymous cvs.
-
-Now for a word about the contents of 5.0.0.
-
-The main thing that has happened over the past three years since I
-escaped graduate school, is that we`ve been trying to fix bugs in the
-autoconf support, and in the Tcl/Tk driver, and in color handling of
-the X driver. There have been a great many bugs rooted out of the
-system over this period of time, and I would encourage all PLplot
-users worldwide, to upgrade to 5.0.0 at this time. This release is
-known to work with 8.x strain Tcl/Tk releases, Itcl 3 releases, Python
-1.5, etc. The problems with X color management are believed to be
-resolved in a manner that is generally satisfactory (there`s always
-room for improvement in this area, but the current state is a big leg
-up over where it was before in the 4.99j or in the early snapshots).
-And numerous patch submissions from users worldwide have been
-integrated (although admittedly there are more outstanding, pending
-core team review). There is also a new Mac driver by Rob Managan.
-Currently just the necessary source and doc files, but we will get his
-Mac CW project support goods uploaded to ftp.plplot.org at some point
-too. So, there`s been lots of improvement since the last release, and
-I hope people will endeavor to upgrade to this new version. If things
-go wrong, please submit patches to sourceforge.net, and we`ll work on
-getting it stabilized.
-
-In the midst of such endeavors, please note the distinction between
-bug fixes to 5.0.x, and feature development for ongoing 5.1. The new
-stuff is going to go into 5.1. 5.0.x is really there just to have an
-up to date stable and official release for those who don`t want to
-track ongoing development. As such, don`t expect major new features
-to appear in 5.0.x releases, just fixes that relate to platform
-support, minor bugs, etc.
-
-So, what lays ahead for 5.1? Well, like I said before, that depends a
-lot on what people contribute. My personal actions will focus in the
-short term on better Tcl package participation and improved Python
-module interaction. But there are more drivers in the works, web
-integration opportunities, more plot types, variations, and viewing
-overhauls, etc, that various people have expressed interest in. More
-news as it happens.
-
-Remember that you can track it all by subscribing to
-<EMAIL: PROTECTED>, or by reviewing the lists chronology in
-geocrawler. Or, you can use the cvs history command (also easily
-accessible in Emacs fromt he version control pane), to see what people
-are doing, track your patch submissions to see when they get in, etc.
-
-Cheers to all,
-
-Geoffrey Furnish
-
-********************* 4.99j NEWS *********************************************
-
-This is the 10th beta release (4.99j) of what will eventually become
-the PLplot 5.0 distribution. At this point I'm mainly trying to root out the
-remaining bugs and system dependencies, but there will undoubtably be a
-few improvements yet before the final version sees the light of day.
-
-Please refer to the following files for more information:
-
-README General introduction, where to get more information, etc.
-NEWS This file
-CHANGES Log of changes to plplot in reverse chronological order.
-ToDo Describes what's on the agenda (no promises, however :-).
-FAQ Frequently answered questions.
-INSTALL Installation notes
-
-Also see the system-specific documentation under sys/<system-name>.
-The manual is being updated! More below.
-
-You can get the PLplot distribution by anonymous ftp from:
-
- /ano...@di...:/plplot
-
-in .zip or .tar.gz form. The most up-to-date (not very, at this point)
-manual (in .ps and .dvi form) and info document files are available there as
-well.
-
-
-For more detail of these changes, consult CHANGES.
-
-**************************************************************************
-Version 4.99j: Summary of major changes
-**************************************************************************
-
-A massive update. Major changes follow:
-
-- A major upgrade of the configure scripts. Now uses Autoconf 2.3 to
-generate. You can now build PLplot in an arbitrary temporary directory,
-typing <path>/configure and then make. This allows building from a
-read-only file system, or setting up multiple build directories using
-different build options simultaneously. Help entries now available for all
-recognized configure command line options. Confusing a --with-<opt> with a
---enable-<opt> is now detected and flagged as an error. The option to skip
-loading the defaults file is now invoked by using --without-defaults or
---with-defaults=no to be more like typical configure parameters. Added
---with-nobraindead (not for general use). Better support of shared
-libraries (in principle), and better handling of the install procedure. Run
-results are sent to the file config.summary, so you can type "ls config.*"
-to see all the informational files created by configure. Searches for
-Fortran compiler if enable_f77=yes. If that isn't found, switches to f2c.
-If that isn't found, enable_f77 is set to "no" (Fortran interface layer is
-omitted). Added --with-dbmalloc, for linking with a debugging malloc
-library. Support generation of shared lib on Linux, using ELF tools.
-
-- Better internal debug handling and reporting. Files where DEBUG is
-defined only generate debug output if the debug stream variable is
-set (e.g. via -debug). Uses stdarg capability, first time I've used
-this in PLplot, so be on the lookout for portability problems with this.
-If all goes well I have other uses of stdargs in mind.
-
+For extremely old release notes for PLplot-5.1.0
+and previous see OLD-NEWS.
Copied: trunk/OLD-NEWS (from rev 12726, trunk/NEWS)
===================================================================
--- trunk/OLD-NEWS (rev 0)
+++ trunk/OLD-NEWS 2013-11-21 02:24:57 UTC (rev 12728)
@@ -0,0 +1,597 @@
+Late news first
+
+************************* 5.1.0 NEWS ***************************************
+
+Important Changes to Existing Features
+
+The Windows port of PLplot has been completely refurbished. PLplot now
+runs on Windows 98 (and perhaps even Windows 95 although that is
+untested), Windows NT, and Windows 2000. See
+plplot/sys/win32/msdev/README.TXT and
+plplot/sys/win32/msdev/INSTALL.TXT for details. Please direct all
+questions about this Windows port to Olof Svensson.
+
+The examples were extensively expanded for each front end to be the
+union of the previous results for all front ends. For example, you
+should now expect to get the same results for the 10 pages of the
+contouring (ninth) example regardless of whether you are running that
+example from Tcl, C, Python, Java (and eventually C++, Fortran, and
+Perl).
+
+We have finished converting all Python examples to use the Numeric
+module (from the Numpy project) wherever possible. This module allows
+high-level array manipulations at C speeds that are quite useful in
+preparing data to be plotted. The xw??.py examples are no longer
+stand-alone scripts. Instead, they are now organized as modules that
+are imported into python scripts such as pythondemos.py or prova.py.
+
+API change:
+
+plxormod now returns a status.
+
+plssub now no longer has a forced page advance inside it (which was
+confusing some drivers). More specific page initialization is used
+inside of plssub instead. If this change causes you some problems, see
+the examples for the proper way to terminate pages and sub-pages.
+
+We no longer support the variety of make commands on the non-GNU/Linux
+unices. Instead, we now only support the GNU version of make which is
+well documented and which can be downloaded from
+ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/make.
+
+The DocBook API chapter (and the man pages and Octave help built from
+that chapter) now have complete documentation of the meaning of the
+function parameters. The overall documentation and our website content
+have been improved as well.
+
+Important New Features
+
+A new cgm (Computer Graphics Metafile) driver has been added. This
+relies on libcd.a which is not maintained any more. Nevertheless
+libcd.a is a free library that works well and does its job so for our
+cgm user's convenience we have put a copy of the cd1.3.tar.gz tarball
+for building this library from source in our file release area. Our
+tests indicate the cgm driver is now stable.
+
+Dynamical loading of device drivers. We have 29 (!) different devices
+for output plots, but only one of those is selected by the user for a
+given plot. Thus, dynamic loading of device drivers makes your
+executables substantially smaller. Caveats: Your Unix must support
+shared libraries (this happens automatically for most Linux
+distributions), xwin and tk drivers are static-only for now (until we
+arrange for the PLplot library itself to be dynamically loaded from
+the Tcl/Tk front-end). Use the --enable-dyndrivers configure option to
+get access to dynamic loading of device drivers.
+
+We now have an experimental Java front end. The PLplot API accessible
+from Java is still incomplete, but it is large enough currently to do
+all planned examples other than x16.java and x18.java. See
+plplot/examples/java/README.javademos for directions about how to get
+access to the Java front end for PLplot.
+
+We now have a new tk (ntk) driver (--enable-ntk) whose goal is to
+provide the tk driver functionality using a simpler, cleaner
+design. This is "a work in progress" because its functionality,
+although working, is still quite limited compared to the traditional
+tk driver.
+
+We now have the beginnings of a Pyqt GUI for PLplot thanks to
+Alessandro Mirone. See examples/python/README.pythondemos for
+directions about how to access it.
+
+We now have an experimental plimage function for PLplot thanks (again)
+to Alessandro Mirone. Try the experimental x20c example to see how to
+work with images in PLplot at the moment, but note the plimage API may
+change in the future.
+
+Important Bug fixes
+
+Interactive color palettes now work for the plframe Tk GUI. This
+important feature allows you to interactively adjust the cmap0
+(discrete) and cmap1 (continuous) colors for a particular plot.
+
+Remaining Important Bugs
+
+The shaded 3D plots (see Example 8) have problems with the edges of
+hidden shaded regions. Our judgement is this donated plotsh3d code is
+too difficult to fix and should be completely replaced. Any
+volunteers? Meanwhile, with Example 8 we do get a taste of the nice
+effects you can have with 3D shaded plots.
+
+There is no page control for the plframe widget for multi-page plots
+in 5.1.0. This has now been fixed in CVS and will get into the next
+release.
+
+Have fun with this latest stable release of PLplot!
+
+Alan W. Irwin for the PLplot core team, 2002 January 31
+
+************************* 5.0.4 NEWS **********************************
+
+Important Changes:
+
+(1) Default orientation for the ljii, ljiip, psc, ps, and pstex drivers has
+been rotated from seascape (upside-down landscape) by 180 deg to landscape.
+With this change no special 180 deg latex rotations will be required to get
+true landscape mode (top of the plot on the left of the page as opposed to
+on the right of the page for seascape mode). If you still require seascape
+for some reason for these drivers, use the -ori 2. command-line option or
+else use plsdiori(2.) or plsetopt("ori", "2.").
+
+(2) The installation location for examples has been changed to
+$prefix/lib/plplot<ver>/examples to be in better conformance with the FHS.
+
+Important Bug fixes:
+
+(1) Many improvements to the octave front end.
+
+(2) Many improvements to the xfig driver.
+
+(3) If the overall aspect ratio is changed by the -geometry, -a, or -portrait
+options or else by the combination of the -ori 1 and -freeaspect options, the
+character aspect ratio remains unaffected. For example, when the overall
+aspect ratio is changed now, circular symbols remain circular rather than
+turning into ellipses as in the old code.
+
+(4) Software pattern fills now rotate correctly with the rest of the plot
+when the -ori option is used. This fix affects all drivers (e.g., xwin,
+psc) which do not handle their own pattern fills. (Previously the rotation
+angle for software pattern fills was mistakenly doubled by two calls to the
+orientation transformation routine.)
+
+Important New Features:
+
+(1) Portrait mode. Use the -portrait option on the command line or else
+plsetopt("portrait", "") to get this option which only currently affects the
+ljii, ljiip, ps, psc, and pstex drivers. This option is especially useful
+for yplot, the yorick front-end to PLplot. yplot previously maintained
+separate (==> hard-to-maintain and buggy) portrait versions of the psc, ps,
+and ljiip drivers. Those will no longer be necessary with this PLplot
+core change, and in fact portrait mode is now available for a much wider
+range of drivers.
+
+(2) -drvopt command-line option (or else use plsetopt("drvopt","option")).
+This allows setting options for particular drivers. For example, the
+-drvopt text option for the psc or ps driver allows use of Adobe fonts (This
+is poorly documented currently, but for now see notes in ps.c for more
+details).
+
+(3) New pstex driver. This is not currently documented, but there is post
+from João Cardoso on plplot_devel
+(http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/10834/2001/4/50/5536095/) that gives
+the recipe (ignore the configuration stuff and start with the ./x01c
+command). The idea is to emulate the pstex output of the xfig application
+so that latex can be used to directly process the file output from the
+PLplot pstex driver.
+
+Have fun with this latest stable release of PLplot!
+
+Alan W. Irwin
+
+************************* 5.0.3 NEWS **************************************
+
+
+The important changes are as follows:
+
+(1) General PNG and JPEG drivers have been added which are based on the
+libgd library (available for Unix/Linux/Mac/Windows). These drivers
+encourage the use of PLplot for web applications because the PNG and JPEG
+formats are so favoured for the web. We classify these two drivers as
+late-beta and we are sufficiently confident of them that we configure them
+by default if you have the appropriate headers and libraries installed from
+libgd, libpng, libjpeg, and zlib. (You need at least libgd-1.7 to obtain
+good PNG images, and at least libgd-1.8 to obtain JPEG images under PLplot.)
+For more information on libgd and the additional required libraries please
+visit http://www.boutell.com/gd/.
+
+(2) The GNUSVGA driver (see plplot/sys/dos/djgpp) has been rewritten
+to use DJGPP V2+ and GRX V2+. The improved driver adds: a cross hair mode; a
+locate mode; double buffering; and an XOR mode to the "screen" driver, all
+of which now give the driver most functions of the XWIN driver. It also
+fixes up: handling of key and mouse events; colormap setting with "-bg"
+switch; and now allows non-fatal/ non-volatile switching between graphics
+and text mode (i.e. it no longer clobbers the computer, and now preserves the
+screen). Additionally (and optionally) the DJGPP driver family now includes
+support for TIFF, BMP, and JPG drivers, and the ability to do "hot key"
+screen-dumps of the screen images to these formats.
+
+(3) Octave is a mostly Matlab compatible high-level language intended for
+numerical computations. An octave front end has been available for some
+years for PLplot-4.99 and has, in fact, been maintained as a Debian package.
+However, this PLplot 5.0.3 release is the first attempt to integrate the
+octave front end with PLplot-5. See the README INSTALL USAGE and FGA
+(frequently given answers) files in bindings/octave to find out how to use
+this front end. Recently, an absolute octave newbie (AWI) was able to get
+all the demos mentioned in INSTALL to work interactively for a Debian potato
+system. Nevertheless, we classify this version of the front end as mid to
+late beta because it has not been tested for a wide variety of environments
+yet. We would welcome reports for this front end.
+
+(4) An experimental Perl front end is just getting underway for PLplot. This
+is an exciting project because it adds an important web-scripting
+environment to PLplot. Usually, documentation trails code, but in this case
+we have the unusual situation where we have parsed our API documentation
+chapter (written in DocBook/XML) to create Perl wrappers for the common
+PLplot API. With this start we have been able to create the demonstration
+Perl script x01.pl which produces identical results to the standard x01c
+demo (that was written in C). For instructions on how to get the Perl
+binding to work, read bindings/perl5/README. More perl script demos are in
+the works, and we welcome your participation (via the plplot-devel mailing
+list, subscribe at http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=2915) in helping to
+develop this front end .
+
+(5) A GNOME-compatible driver has been written for PLplot. At this point,
+the driver is being rapidly developed with many exciting interactive
+capabilities being considered. If you want to get in on the development of
+this driver we urge you to subscribe to the plplot-devel mailing list (see
+http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=2915). We classify this driver as
+alpha because the interactive features are not complete, but already it is
+stable enough to view most of the demonstrations without problems. If you
+want to try this for yourself, use --enable-gnome when you configure PLplot,
+and for any demo specify gnome as the driver.
+
+(6) Many other small changes. The important ones include the following:
+
+(a) A test script. After you have built and installed the demo programmes
+(go to $prefix/share/doc/plplot/examples and execute make cdemos in the c
+directory, fdemos in the f77 directory, cxxdemos in the c++ directory) then
+plplot-test.sh will generate all possible postscript file results for all
+demos. (Use the --help option to explore other file driver possibilities.)
+This script is an excellent way to test that you have built everything
+properly on your system.
+
+(b) A plplot-config configuration script to help you build your PLplot
+applications. Do plplot-config --help to learn how to use it.
+
+(b') We have changed a library name. The matrix library core name is now
+libtclmatrix. A d suffix is applied to the name (just as for all other
+libraries) if the library is built with --with-double=yes configured. If
+you are using the plplot-config script to help link your applications, then
+this library name change should be transparent to you.
+
+(c) Added plshades routine to make life much easier for generating
+continuously shaded plots. See x16c for a demonstration.
+
+(d) Small change in exclusion API for shade plots. (If you are not
+excluding regions of your shade plots this does not affect you.) For an
+example of the new exclusion API for plshades see x16c.c. The excluded
+annulus now actually is smooth--a nice improvement. See plshades.c for the
+changes to the plshade exclusion API.
+
+(e) Added argument list processing for xw??.py demos.
+
+(f) Bug fix. Clip was not being applied to fills, now is.
+
+(g) x10.tcl and x15.tcl added to demos.
+
+(h) float --> PLFLT throughout the code. This change exterminates much of
+the single precision that was contaminating the code (with consequent large
+roundoff errors that differed from machine to machine) when
+--with-double=yes is configured. Comparison of 32-bit and 64-bit results
+for x??c now indicates identical postscript files except for date (of
+course) and the x05c and x16c examples (which still must have some
+single-precision contaminating them somewhere.) Other demos still need to be
+checked for single-precision contamination in addition to the fundamental
+x??c examples.
+
+(i) Package relocatability put in. This is essential for building debs and
+rpm's.
+
+(j) Assorted documentation improvements including adding a Chapter entitled
+"Notes for each Operating System that We Support". So far only filled with
+somewhat sparse information on Unix/Linux. If you want to contribute some
+documentation for other platforms, feel free to send the material to AWI,
+and he will include it.
+
+Reports are welcome (especially using plplot-test.sh) for all OS/hardware
+combinations. It is only through such reports (and patches that work for
+you) that we can improve our cross-platform support.
+
+Alan W. Irwin
+
+************************* 5.0.2 NEWS *************************************
+
+Note we also have some innovation in the new release as well as bug fixing.
+
+(1) The python xw??.py examples should now work right out of the box
+without fooling around with PYTHONPATH.
+
+(2) Install file locations now conform to the FHS. So, for example,
+you will find the examples installed at
+$prefix/share/doc/plplot/examples.
+
+(3) The content of the documentation source has been greatly improved
+from 5.0.1. We have now completely finished going through the doc
+directory for several generations of notes on various topics and
+incorporated all this material (with substantial updates and
+expansions) into our docbook source. The result is new docbook
+sections/chapters on devices, driver functions, plrender and
+metafiles, familying, interactive output devices, color, and C and
+fortran bindings. We have added API sections that are specialized to C
+and fortran. We have also added a bibliography and reorganized the
+material so that all the reference material (bibliography and API
+sections) appear at the back of the document. We have now removed
+virtually all the old files in doc so there is no longer the potential
+of getting confused with these older generations of documentation.
+
+We don't anticipate the addition of too many more chapters or sections
+to the documentation, but some refinement of the existing
+chapters/sections still needs to be done. If you are interested in
+helping with this effort, please contact yours truly
+(ir...@be...).
+
+(4) Our DocBook source can be built into PLplot documentation in a
+variety of formats (currently html, dvi, postscript, pdf, info, and
+man). Our CVS does not have these files because they are generated
+rather than source files. However, you can always get the latest forms
+of these results from http://www.plplot.org/resources/docbook-manual/,
+and for your convenience we have also bundled these results into the
+doc directory of the 5.0.2 tarball.
+
+Please send bug reports, comments, and questions to the PLplot list,
+and have fun (and profit) with the new 5.0.2 release of plplot!
+
+Alan
+
+************************* 5.0.1 NEWS ***************************************
+
+Note we also have some innovation in the new release as well as bug fixing.
+
+(1) The documentation building process has been changed completely over to
+DocBook 4.1 XML. To see the nice html, postscript, pdf, dvi, info, and man
+results of this effort, please look at
+http://www.plplot.org/resources/docbook-manual/
+
+(2) The content of the documentation source has been greatly improved from
+previous versions. However, more work is always needed on documentation
+content, and if you have an interest in helping out with this aspect of
+plplot, please contact yours truly (Alan W. Irwin).
+
+(3) The header file style has been changed to be similar to that of X. That
+is every header file reference in source should have the prefix plplot, e.g.,
+
+#include "plplot/plConfig.h"
+
+This gives much less potential for nameclashes, if the headers are stored in,
+e.g., /usr/include/plplot. It also means that the -I parameter stays the
+same as it was before on the compile line.
+
+(4) The library names have been changed so they are in a more consistent style
+now that gives more protection against nameclashes. All library tags
+(suffixes to the core name of libplplot, libplmatrix, etc.) are
+now gone except for d for double precision and nothing for single precision
+or the libplmatrix library (which is always single precision even if
+you have configured double precision). To indicate what the library names
+that were used to build plrender, execute the installed
+$prefix/bin/plplot_linkage. On my current system this emits the following
+line:
+-L/usr/local/plplot/lib -lplplotd -lplmatrix -litk3.1 -ltk8.2 -litcl3.1
+-ltcl8.2 -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11 -lvga -ldl -lm -lg2c -Wl,-rpath
+-Wl,/usr/local/plplot/lib
+
+Your system (if it isn't Debian potato) will have a different link line
+emitted by $prefix/bin/plplot_linkage. That is the one to use!
+
+(5) Python now works! (at least in widgetless mode). Configure python (which
+happens by default), and try out the new widgetless examples, xw??.py.
+You will like them! These examples all require double precision. Eventually,
+we plan to add Tk widget capabilities to these examples. Any help
+would be appreciated.
+
+(6) Fortran now works with double precision and Linux! (It always worked
+well with single precision before, but it is nice to have this generality.)
+
+Please send bug reports, comments, and questions to this list, and
+have fun (and profit) with the new 5.0.1 release of plplot!
+
+Alan
+
+************************* 5.0.0 NEWS ***************************************
+
+Greetings to all,
+
+And you thought it would /NEVER/ happen. :-).
+
+I am pleased to announce that PLplot version 5.0.0 has been released.
+The rest of this email will attempt to explain exactly what this means
+in more detail.
+
+Now for a little background. We are done with the 4.99 x, x=abc...
+business, as well as the dated snapshots. Dated snapshots are being
+replaced by providing anonymous cvs access through plplot.org. So
+anyone who wants to track day-to-day development, or follow progress
+on their patch submissions, etc, will be able to do that by using cvs.
+
+In addition to that, we will provide real releases which are supposed
+to be stable, or at least to get stable over a short time. The
+releasing naming conventions will follow the Linux tradition. Even
+releases are supposed to be stable, and only bug fixes and
+stabilization patches will be applied to these. Thus, 5.0.0 is the
+first in this strain. If people find minor little nits that need
+fixing, this will result in 5.0.1, 5.0.2, etc. We hope it doesn`t get
+too far... Ongoing feature development will proceed in the 5.1
+strain.
+
+The release and versioning business is coordinated with cvs in the
+following manner. Stable releases go on a branch. Ongoing
+development continues on the cvs head. To be really cvs technical, we
+provide a branch point tag, a branch tag, and release tags. So, to be
+totally explicit, I did the following operations today when preparing
+the 5.0.0 release:
+
+1) cvs tag bp_v5_0
+2) cvs rtag -b -r bp_v5_0 v5_0 plplot
+3) cvs tag v5_0_0
+4) cvs export -r v5_0_0 plplot
+5) mv plplot/ plplot-5.0.0
+6) tar cvzf plplot-5.0.0.tar.gz plplot-5.0.0/
+
+Step 1 labels the state of the repository at the point in time when we
+fork the 5.0 release branch. The name of the branch point for the 5.0
+release, is bp_v5_0. Step 2 creates a cvs "branch tag" for referring
+to the head of this branch. The name of this tag is v5_0. Step 3
+creates a tag for the specific release 5.0.0, with tag name v5_0_0.
+In the current case, there were no changes made between any of these
+steps, so steps 1, 2, and 3 all refer to the same versions of the
+files. But as we move on from here, people who wish to participate in
+stabilizing the 5.0 branch will need to check out the head of this
+branch via:
+
+ cvs co -r v5_0 plplot
+
+Then they can do stabilization oriented development, submit context
+diffs, and the core team will apply these patches, and eventually at
+various points along the way, we will tag v5_0_1, v5_0_2, etc. So,
+the thing to understand here is that "v5_0" is the branch tag. It is
+a floating reference, which alwasy points to the head of this branch.
+Non branch tags just refer to static file versions, labelling a single
+specific collection of file versions for all of time.
+
+Henceforth, the main line of deveopment, which we will call 5.1,
+proceeds on the cvs head. There is no branch tag for this. To see
+the ongoing develoment work on the 5.1 branch, just do:
+
+ cvs co plplot
+
+Use update to track ongoing work, etc. We may possibly tag a few
+interesting points along the way as v5_1_0, v5_1_1, etc, but there
+will not be a branch tag for this. Eventually, when 5.1 development
+seems to have run its course, we will fork another branch for 5.2,
+making a new branch point tag bp_v5_2, a branch tag v5_2 to refer to
+the head of the branch holding the 5.2 release strain, and occasional
+tags for specific 5.2.x releases.
+
+Hopefully that is comprehensible to people with a cvs background. See
+the CVS faq for more background. We`ll try to put this kind of info
+on the web site somewhere as we get better organized.
+
+Anyway, in addition to the cvs access mechanisms described above, we
+also are providing the 5.0.0 release as a .tar.gz file. Steps 4, 5,
+and 6 show exactly how this was created, guaranteeing that the
+plplot-5.0.0.tar.gz file contains exactly the file versions that were
+tagged as v5_0_0 in step 3, but omitting the CVS control information.
+This tarball release is appropriate for people who just want the code
+in a packaged form, and aren`t interested in tracking the cvs
+development specifically, or even in using cvs to fetch identified
+versions. This file has been uploaded to the plplot.org ftp site.
+You can get it via:
+
+ /<EMAIL: PROTECTED>:/pub/plplot/plplot-5.0.0.tar.gz
+
+Eventually we will get the http://www.plplot.org web site updated to reflect
+this, and also figure out how to identify this file release on the
+sourceforge.net project page for plplot. Someone will post messages
+about that as we progress in these other areas.
+
+Anyway, the bottom line is, right now you can get PLplot 5.0.0, either
+by anonymous ftp, or by anonymous cvs.
+
+Now for a word about the contents of 5.0.0.
+
+The main thing that has happened over the past three years since I
+escaped graduate school, is that we`ve been trying to fix bugs in the
+autoconf support, and in the Tcl/Tk driver, and in color handling of
+the X driver. There have been a great many bugs rooted out of the
+system over this period of time, and I would encourage all PLplot
+users worldwide, to upgrade to 5.0.0 at this time. This release is
+known to work with 8.x strain Tcl/Tk releases, Itcl 3 releases, Python
+1.5, etc. The problems with X color management are believed to be
+resolved in a manner that is generally satisfactory (there`s always
+room for improvement in this area, but the current state is a big leg
+up over where it was before in the 4.99j or in the early snapshots).
+And numerous patch submissions from users worldwide have been
+integrated (although admittedly there are more outstanding, pending
+core team review). There is also a new Mac driver by Rob Managan.
+Currently just the necessary source and doc files, but we will get his
+Mac CW project support goods uploaded to ftp.plplot.org at some point
+too. So, there`s been lots of improvement since the last release, and
+I hope people will endeavor to upgrade to this new version. If things
+go wrong, please submit patches to sourceforge.net, and we`ll work on
+getting it stabilized.
+
+In the midst of such endeavors, please note the distinction between
+bug fixes to 5.0.x, and feature development for ongoing 5.1. The new
+stuff is going to go into 5.1. 5.0.x is really there just to have an
+up to date stable and official release for those who don`t want to
+track ongoing development. As such, don`t expect major new features
+to appear in 5.0.x releases, just fixes that relate to platform
+support, minor bugs, etc.
+
+So, what lays ahead for 5.1? Well, like I said before, that depends a
+lot on what people contribute. My personal actions will focus in the
+short term on better Tcl package participation and improved Python
+module interaction. But there are more drivers in the works, web
+integration opportunities, more plot types, variations, and viewing
+overhauls, etc, that various people have expressed interest in. More
+news as it happens.
+
+Remember that you can track it all by subscribing to
+<EMAIL: PROTECTED>, or by reviewing the lists chronology in
+geocrawler. Or, you can use the cvs history command (also easily
+accessible in Emacs fromt he version control pane), to see what people
+are doing, track your patch submissions to see when they get in, etc.
+
+Cheers to all,
+
+Geoffrey Furnish
+
+********************* 4.99j NEWS *********************************************
+
+This is the 10th beta release (4.99j) of what will eventually become
+the PLplot 5.0 distribution. At this point I'm mainly trying to root out the
+remaining bugs and system dependencies, but there will undoubtably be a
+few improvements yet before the final version sees the light of day.
+
+Please refer to the following files for more information:
+
+README General introduction, where to get more information, etc.
+NEWS This file
+CHANGES Log of changes to plplot in reverse chronological order.
+ToDo Describes what's on the agenda (no promises, however :-).
+FAQ Frequently answered questions.
+INSTALL Installation notes
+
+Also see the system-specific documentation under sys/<system-name>.
+The manual is being updated! More below.
+
+You can get the PLplot distribution by anonymous ftp from:
+
+ /ano...@di...:/plplot
+
+in .zip or .tar.gz form. The most up-to-date (not very, at this point)
+manual (in .ps and .dvi form) and info document files are available there as
+well.
+
+
+For more detail of these changes, consult CHANGES.
+
+**************************************************************************
+Version 4.99j: Summary of major changes
+**************************************************************************
+
+A massive update. Major changes follow:
+
+- A major upgrade of the configure scripts. Now uses Autoconf 2.3 to
+generate. You can now build PLplot in an arbitrary temporary directory,
+typing <path>/configure and then make. This allows building from a
+read-only file system, or setting up multiple build directories using
+different build options simultaneously. Help entries now available for all
+recognized configure command line options. Confusing a --with-<opt> with a
+--enable-<opt> is now detected and flagged as an error. The option to skip
+loading the defaults file is now invoked by using --without-defaults or
+--with-defaults=no to be more like typical configure parameters. Added
+--with-nobraindead (not for general use). Better support of shared
+libraries (in principle), and better handling of the install procedure. Run
+results are sent to the fi...
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