ploticus: release notes for earlier versions

## Release notes for earlier versions | Welcome Gallery Handbook |
| Manual page for Release_notes_for_earlier_versions(PL)

Release notes for current version

## Ploticus version 1.41: 18 Jun '01

- Ploticus now covered under .
- proc bars - additional (diagonal) cross hatching available as an accessory (see d ownload page)
- Fixed bug: colored background not completely filling the result window when scale is being done
- Fixed scripts in test suite: The change in default size (version 1.40) sometimes caused general layout problems with graphics that were layed out with an 8.5" x 11" default size in mind. The solution for these scripts is to add a #proc page and specify `pagesize: 8.5 11`. Some of the scripts in the test suite had such problems and are now fixed.
- Fixed bug: EPS bounding box incorrect for 1) pltab output and 2) pl where result draws into negative absolute coordinate space.
- Fixed bug: proc areadef xautorange/yautorange not working correctly in some cases when a nearest= value is specified. This bug was apparently introduced in 1.40.
- Fixed bug: proc lineplot - accum option choking when non-numeric data encountered.
- Fixed bug: proc rangebar - negative barloc values not working.
- Added: proc areadef - autorange datafield may now be a comma-delimited list of dfields so that multiple data fields are considered when determining the axis min and max.
- Changed: scaletypes - times hh:mm:ss and mm:ss - validity checking relaxed slightly to allow degenerate values such as 0:4:9
- Fixed bug: pltab - incorrect interaction between #font and sectionheadings
- Fixed bug: proc rangebar - textdetails controls N= label but not missing label
- Fixed bug: pltab - creates 8.5 x 11 inch gif, png regardless of result size
- Fixed bug: axis - line grid and gridblock starting point incorrect in X
- Fixed bug: axis - colors incorrect when specified in certain combinations for tics, stubs, grid
- Fixed bug: bars - ticks not being drawn when truncating was not switched on

## Ploticus version 1.40: Jan 16 '01

This release includes improved support for automatic on-demand plotting, especially automatic determination of scale and plot size from data. It also incorporates a bundle of new features, both user-requested and not.

- proc getdata - variables may be declared and set from within data files using #set
- proc curvefit - linear regression and correlation
- proc areadef - "autowidth" and "autoheight" attributes for data-driven plot area size
- proc axis - alternating shaded block backgrounds
- added: new script $functions - $exists() and $notexists() to test if a @VARIABLE has a value. See functions(pl)
- added: new script #operators - #hideund and #showund to control display of embedded underscores, and #includesh. See scripts(pl)
- added: new scaletype - log+1 scaling for handling log-characeristic data that may contain values of 0.0
- added: proc areadef - autorange - "incmult", which assists in automatically determining hi and low margin
- added: proc areadef - "xextracategory" and "yextracategory" attributes, which allow categories to be added explicitly even when most categories are defined from data
- added: proc axis - "stubcull" attribute for eliminating stub collision, or pile up on log axis
- added: proc axis - definable extent for grid lines
- added: cmyk color specification for use with PostScript and EPS.
- added: textdetails - "font" subattribute for setting PostScript font.
- added: proc print - "outfile" and "outmode" attributes allowing proc print to write to files
- added: proc print - now sets a variable called NSELECTED.
- added: proc legend - "reset" attribute.
- added: proc bars - "hidezerobars" attribute
- added: proc curvefit - "select" attribute
- added: proc curvefit - new curvetype - "avg"
- added: proc tabulate - "showrange" attribute supercedes showrangelowonly. Range label can be the average of low and high end of range.
- added: proc rangebar - "logmean" attribute, for computing means and standard deviations in log space.
- added: proc rangebar - "statsonly" attribute, to compute stats and set variables without drawing the bar.
- added: proc rangebar - now sets the variables RANGEBARIQRMIN and RANGEBARIQRMAX.
- changed: proc getdata - pl no longer quits when no data could be read. Scripts can check @NRECORDS after getdata finishes and take appropriate action.
- changed: default result size is now 8" x 8".
- changed: proc curvefit - data no longer need to be ordered on X for curve computation
- changed: standalone $functions (those that are not part of an #if construct) may contain embedded white space
- changed: color specifications - the separator character in rgb(r,g,b) constructs may be any of comma, dash, colon, or pipe. Comma was problematic if rgb constructs were put into a comma-delimited list, as in students example.
- changed: .pls is now a "known extension" for script files.
- changed: improved the heuristic for automatic axis increment determination
- fixed bug: proc scatterplot - if select condition used or if values are out-of-range, labels from data and datapoint size from data may be incorrect due to data alignment bug.
- fixed bug: proc lineplot - if select condition used or if values are out-of-range, labels from data may be incorrect due to data alignment bug.
- fixed bug: proc rangebar - file close problem causing core dump on linux
- fixed bug: multipage plots & page breaks - if proc page was used to break to page 2, and proc page wasn't used for page 1, drawing continues on page 1.
- fixed bug: proc getdata - select was not working when field names used (message: no such data field).
- fixed bug: date scaling - dates containing embedded dashes were not converted properly when used. as locvalue e.g. proc annotate location.
- fixed bug: $max() function was giving incorrect results
- fixed bug: proc page - on multipage landscape plots using PNG/GIF only the last page was viewable.
- fixed bug: PNG/GIF driver memory leak when doing multipage plots.
- fixed bug: incorrect fda() calls in tabulate.c and processdata.c.
- fixed bug: proc getdata filters - potential instability if references were made to data fields beyond NFIELDS.
- fixed bug: proc bars - tics produced through the use of leftticfield, rightticfield, and midticfield were being drawn outside of plotting area

## FAQ Sept 29 '00 Expanded and updated.

Recently added questions are denoted as NEW. Now includes some discussion of performance issues near the end of the document.

## Version 1.39: Sept 29 '00

- Changed - proc transform renamed as proc processdata ('transform' still works)
- Changed - script syntax - references to undeclared @variables are now left alone. Formerly they had resulted in syntax errors.
- Added - proc areadef - autorange - if nearest= is omitted a reasonable default will be used for numeric data. Formerly it defaulted to exact min and max, which was usually not desirable. It is now possible to say nearest=exact to get exact min and max, should that be wanted.
- Added - proc areadef - categories - a new attribute called 'catcompmethod', to control the details of how category comparisons are done.
- Added - proc areadef - now sets variables XMIN, XMAX, YMIN, and YMAX
- Fixed bug - proc areadef - autorange - problems with negative numbers;
- Added - proc axis - 'stubs increment' with no following value gives a reasonable default increment. So does 'stubs inc 0'.
- Added - proc bars - barwidthfield and bwfscale for data-driven bar widths
- Added - proc datesettings - several new options for omitting weekends
- Fixed bug - proc getdata - choking on long path names. Increased sizes of many buffers throughout.
- Fixed bug - proc getdata field names - a name beginning with a number such as 16kHz was being interpreted as an integer field number.
- Added - proc processdata - new actions 'breaks' to do break processing on data sets, and related action 'breakreset'.
- Added - proc rangebar - when using meanmode, plotfields may now be used for getting a mean, standard deviation, and optionally an N value.
- Changed - proc rangebar - variable NVALUES is now always set, even if nothing was plotted (it will be zero in this case).
- Added - proc rangebar - new attributes showbriefstats, showstatsfile, briefstatstag to make a file holding computed statistical info that can be used by other programs
- Added - proc rangebar - allow 'none' for outliernearsym and outlierfarsym, for when displaying outliers using only labels or line segments.
- Added - proc rangebar - a new attribute called 'skipmed', to omit median and percentiles calculation when only means and standard deviations are needed (a performance consideration).
- Fixed bug - proc rangesweep - bug involving the use of 'select'
- Added - new function - $dataitem(), to access a single data item from the current data set by row and field position.
- Added - command line / proc page - the options -croprel and -crop
- Changed - ploticus temp file naming now uses shorter names
- Added - user-contributed RPM spec file. See the Download page under Accessories.
- Changed - makefile & build - copied gd_io.h to the gd16 subdirectory for successful solaris 'make' build
- Added - MP/ix added to Makefile
- Changed - gallery example EPS or Postscript files will no longer be stored on the web site, except for the pltab examples.
- Changed - ploticus manual in postscript form will no longer be maintained or distributed.

## Ploticus is one year old: Aug 25 '00

## Version 1.38: Jun 9 '00

- It is now possible to set the directory used for temp files, using a new config attribute tmpdir.
- under cygwin, problems have been reported with pltab writing postscript to standard output. Workaround is to use pltab -o
  Version 1.37: May 24 '00
- Added new proc - proc datesettings
- Added - an option to omit weekends with date or datetime scaling, via proc datesettings
- Improved - numeric data in scientific format e.g. 4.335e12 now supported
- Improved - #declare and #musthave now can take comma-delimited lists of variable names
- Fixed bug - proc bars, error bars not positioned correctly w/ clustering
- Fixed bug - proc rangebar, 1.5iqr mode, incorrect upper tail length
- Fixed bug - proc rangebar, zero length tail should not be drawn at all
- Fixed bug - proc tabulate, entries should not be sorted when valuelist is used

## Version 1.36: Apr 10 '00

- Fixed bug - categories scaling - handling of duplicate category tags
- New attribute - proc bars - numberformat attribute
- Improved - programs 8-bit clean and support locales - thanks to Oleg Bartunov
- Fixed bug - removed a few x11 compile dependencies that were present even with -DNOX11
- Improved - proc transform - numbernotation may be applied to TOTALS
- Fixed bug - proc rangebar - 1.5iqr tails/outliers were incorrect for degenerate cases (small N)
- Added a new function called $fieldname()
- Improved - proc tabulate now allows NO ordering
- Note: under cygwin, the directory /usr/tmp must exist and be writable by everybody.
- Withdrawn - proc pie - lower edge of pie boundary is "fuzzy". A gd rounding error?

## Version 1.35: Mar 1 '00

- Fixed bug - numbernotation - spacer chars being added within leading blank zones in stubs
- Fixed bugs - proc lineplot - incorrect fill under stairstep curve and lastseglen
- Fixed bug - proc getdata - program crashed when proc getdata filter encounters blank lines in data file
- Fixed bug - proc rangebar - 1.5 x IRQ tails not computed correctly (also affects outliers)
- Improved - postscript %%Creator and %%Title tags not used correctly
- Fixed bug - proc pie - line+label not working correctly on gallery example pie4.htm
- Improved - proc line - first coordinate pair should implicitly do a 'moveto'
- Added pltab -landscape option
- Added new function $max()
- Fixed bug - pltab centering of column stubs (had been left-aligned)
- Fixed bug - multi-page landscape postscript - 2nd page orientation was incorrect

## ploticus.perl Mar 1 '00

This is a perl script which implements a web interface to ploticus. It was contributed by Tom McClure.

## Version 1.34: Jan 28 '00

- Added `transparent` color; use as background color to create transparent GIFs and PNGs.
- Added feature to display numbers in european or us notation with separators for large numbers (settable in config file).
- Added proc tabulate `accumfield` option.
- Added feature to make proc bars `stackfields` easier to use.
- Fixed bug - proc tabulate not handling date (etc.) units correctly when ranges not specified.
- Fixed bugs - proc areadef autorange - various problems involving large data values, datetime data, and nearest=hours.
- Fixed bug - datetime scaletype - all values 'outside window' when default date & time notations in use, even though no window was defined.
- Added areadef autorange sub-parameter `format`.
- Added areadef autorange `nearest=day`.
- Fixed bug - proc bars - default bar width sometimes much too wide; added a sanity override.

## Version 1.33: Dec 21 99

- Added proc bars lablepos attribute
- Fixed bug - config file "units: cm" not working.
- Added -cm and -inches command line options.
- Added -o stdout to write GIF, PNG, or EPS result to standard output.
- Fixed bug - script files ending in .pl not handled properly.
- Fixed bug - proc rangebar plotfields not working properly.
- Fixed bug - proc bars taillen not being cloned properly for errorbars.
- Fixed bug - proc areadef box attribute not handling cm properly.

## Version 1.32: Nov 15 99 (sunfreeware.com only)

- Fixed bug - proc rangebar - 1.5*interquartile range tails were not truncated at the min/max.
- Added proc bars colorlist attribute

## Version 1.31: Oct 29 99.

- Fixed bug - proc getdata 'filter' caused instability on linux
- Fixed bug - multiline legend entries too far apart
- Fixed bug - proc rangebar outliers when a 'select' is being used
- Fixed bug - proc rangebar and proc bar 'entire bar out of range' problem

## Version 1.3: Oct 27 99.

- Added datetime scale type.
- Added proc breakaxis.
- Added proc rangebar outlier display and reporting features
- Added hatch patterns as a color option
- Added a new proc transform action called 'count'.
- Added proc axis signreverse attribute to assist w/ high to low axes
- Added 'hifix' and 'lowfix' to proc areadef autorange attribute.
- In proc legend, the 'sep' attribute now controls the vertical separation when multiline format is used, as well as the horizontal separation when singleline format is used.

## Version 1.21: Sep 28 99.

- Fixed proc page bug involving missing postscript showpage.
- Fixed proc page bug involving incorrect default line width on page 2 and up of a multipage result
- Proc page - default EPS behavior changed to NOT do background, unless a background color is specified.
- Fixed bug where timestamp directory name is truncated incorrectly.
- Script file names can now end in .pl (in addition to .p, .htm, .html as before)
- Minor items related to AIX port.

## Version 1.2, Sep 13 99.

- Added PNG support.
- Fixed bugs in Pie and textdetails style subattribute.
- Dropped the Page/device attribute.
- Added the Annotation/boxmargin attribute.
- Removed support for GIF import.

## Version 1.1, Aug 30 99

- fixed proc lineplot bug evidenced by stock.htm;
- other minor items related to linux & irix port. (note: pl -version still reports 1.0 in some of the binaries)

## Version 1.0, Aug 25 99, original release.

data display engine
Copyright Steve Grubb

Markup created by unroff 1.0, `` `` September 04, 2001.