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1. Introduction

QScanPlot is inspired in the Shareware tool from Marisoft Digitizer. QScanPlot gets an scanned image of a figure (from a textbook, an article, ...), and let's you extract the data used to create the plot, by defining axes systems in the figure and curves of points. These points can be afterwards written (exported) to a simple ASCII file.

The resulting documents created with QScanPlot are written to disk in XML format.

QScanPlot can export the resulting, extracted data in a user-defined format (that includes customized separators of data values, comment markers, numeric format), in separated data pair sets or in a block data.

In addition, there are several pre-defined output formats (Octave, SCILab and GNUPlot).

For more information, please, have a look into the QScanPlot web page http://www.gae.ucm.es/~gonzalez/qscanplot.

QScanPlot is listed in the Open Directory Project website (you know, "Humans do it better"), under the category Computers: Software: Graphics: Optimization and Conversion.

QScanPlot uses the Qt Widget Library from TrollTech. If you want to know more about other Qt based applications, please check the page Free Software Based on Qt in the Troll's web site.

1.1 Changes

Please, read this.


2001-11-03

        * Once upon a time... OK, long after the release of the last beta,
        the *NEW BETA* version, 0.3, is available for downloading.  This
        version does not mean a big step since the last one, but still you
        should get it. A lit of bugs solved / features added follows:

        * Bugs in Exporting data with some predefined formats are
        solved. Some minor bugs are corrected, some more are missed, and
        even some new are added!

        * Dialogs now are more consistently built. There was a
        misunderstanding of how to use layouts in Qt Designer. Now
        everything goes smoother.
        
        * Numeric formats: Finally the user defined numeric format for the
        data to be exported does work.

        * Preview of the data to be exported (in the selected format) is
        implemented. The sequence can be: Export Setup - Export Preview -
        Export.

        * Documentation improved (I hope).
        
        * Some new toolbar buttons. The menus have now a "TearOffHandle".
        Never heard about that? OK, you'll see it.

2001-09-26

        * Third BETA available. New version is 0.2, still in BETA phase.
        Documentation a bit outdated.

        * Grids are integrated in the system: the user can define grids in
        the X axis (x_min, x_max and number of intervals or interval
        width). At export time, the user can select a grid as the base for
        the X values.

        * Included Selection of Interpolator for exporting data. Still
        some problems can appear, but a basic framework has been
        established.

2001-09-12

        * Problem found: when one opens "Edit Axes/Curves" dialog, exits
        with "Cancel", and then try it again, the program crashes. I dunno
        what the hell happens here, so I removed this possibility, i.e.,
        when you press double click in an entry in this dialog (and a
        second dialog opens), you will actually edit the objet (unless you
        press in this second dialog the "Cancel" button, which DOES work).

        * Solved problem with "Options|Sort points". The problem was that
        once you export some curves and this is ON, the points remain
        sorted. Now a copy of the list of points is sorted, and then
        destroyed, in the Export routine.

2001-09-06

        * Second BETA available. New/close document already
        operative. Some minor bugs in distribution were corrected.

2001-09-03

        * First BETA version almost ready. Still, handling of new
        documents, closing of documents and the like is not working. Also,
        there's no way to delete Axes Systems, Curves or even points,
        although they can be moved in the image or edited (in the case of
        axis points).


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