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Manual page for Release_notes_and_current_issues(PL)
Correspondence: scg@jax.org
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Latest version of this page (ploticus.sourceforge.net)
Considering upgrading from an older version?
There is now a
summary of several changes that could break old scripts and applications.
Version 2.03 - released on 4 March '02
This version includes many new features and bug fixes.
- Fixed bug - cgi mode - CGI SECURITY RISK - command line arguments
that were insecure or inappropriate in CGI mode are now disabled when in CGI mode.
- pltab has been discontinued.
- Improvement - cgi mode - If -debug is specified all diagnotistic
and error msg output automatically goes to specific files. This should simplify debugging in
CGI mode.
- New feature - client-side imagemaps
- Improvement - proc datesettings has been expanded and renamed to proc settings.
This proc can now be used to make most settings that previously required a config file.
- Improvement - proc bevelrect has been renamed to proc rect, and
should now be thought of as the preferred way to draw arbitrary shaded rectangles.
- Changed: #proc endproc may now be written #endproc. The old
syntax will also continue to work.
- New feature - proc areadef categories - new modifier selectrows which
allows categories to be taken from data field based on a conditional expression.
- New attribute - proc processdata - outfile
allows result to be written to a file. This came up because a user wanted to perform
arithmetic (a la getdata filter) to processdata result, and there was no way to do it.
- New feature - proc annotate can now do drop shadows,
beveling, and colored backing box with or without outline.
- New attribute - proc getdata - pf_fieldnames
for defining post-filter fieldnames.
- Improvement - max number of legend entries raised to 80 (was 30).
- New attribute - config and proc settings -
numberspacerthreshold controls when thousands separator characters begin to appear.
- New system variable - CM_UNITS - indicates if working in
-cm mode or not.
- Improvement - special #include statements that refer to the prefabs directory (filename beginning
with $) may be used any time, not just with -prefab. This will make it easier to copy prefab scripts
into other directories for customization.
- Fixed bug - pl crashes when reading any config file.
- Fixed bug - prefabs were not working in CGI mode.
- Fixed bug - script lines longer than 255 were overflowing. The published script line
length limit is 3000.
- Fixed bug - cm mode - cm conversion was not being done on ploticus variables that hold
generated absolute coordinate values (eg AREALEFT). Position of prefab titles was affected.
- Fixed bug - proc processdata - count action - the counts for highest and lowest category were off by 1.
- Fixed bug - problem with date formats containing dashes (eg.
dd-mmm-yyyy) when setting up plotting area and data space.
- Fixed bug - number display - large number 000 separators interacting incorrectly with stub formatting.
- Fixed bug - times - the displayable seconds component of time values was being shown
as a value between 0.0 -> 1.0 rather than 0 -> 60.
- Fixed bug - times - data values having a seconds component > 59.0 (eg. 59.3) were considered invalid.
- Fixed & improved - times - noon and/or midnight were displayed incorrectly when hha format
was being used. Noon is now represented as 12n and midnight is represented as 12am.
- Fixed bug - proc legend - incomplete legend when specifyorder has more entries than the number of legend entries.
- Fixed bugs - cm mode - certain objects were too small in -cm mode, including default prefab plot size,
various hard-coded prefab sizes, and default symbol size.
Summary of changes likely to break old scripts & applications
Unless otherwise stated, ploticus versions are designed to be backward-compatible, meaning
that a "well-behaved" script written for an earlier version of ploticus should work
on any later version. However there are several exceptions:
- version 2.03 - pltab no longer supported.
- version 2.03 - proc rect (old name proc bevelrect) - bevelsize must now be specified
in order to get a bevelled rectangle.
- version 2.02 - lines prefab - changed the way that the fill parameter works.
Previously it had applied to all curves and line color was used. Now it is specified
as a color, and separately for each curve (using fill2, fill3, and fill4). This will
break any existing applications that use the lines prefab to render multiple filled curves.
- version 2.00 - New script interpreter resulted in some script syntax changes.
Concatenation of variables is done differently in #set and #if statements,
#setifnotgiven replaces #declare soft, and some other minor issues.
Here are the details.
Areas of ongoing development
I can proceed with Ploticus development as my "day job" allows.
Because Ploticus is now covered under GPL, which allows code to
be freely used in other GPL projects, I am posting here the
areas that I hope to get to in the near future, so that other
developers know where I am headed.
- overhaul of the gallery and examples, with more cross-references and an index
- additional prefabs
Requested features not yet implemented
- should be able to automatically use field name headers as legend labels
- the ability to run as a persistent daemon and accept commands via named pipe
- proc axis - when doing tics but no stubs, we need a ticrange attribute to range the tics
- a method for automatic annotation placement, including avoidance of annotation, label,
and plot object collisions.
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 data display engine
Copyright Steve Grubb
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