Release notes for earlier versions
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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.



Version 2.02 - Jan 11, '02

  • HTML server-side imagemap support has been added.

  • The data parsing code has been rewritten, and now allows situations that weren't allowed before, such as blank fields (tab or .csv formats), and variable number of fields per row. The dataformat documentation has also been improved.

  • new attribute - proc getdata - nfields - Controls the expected number of fields per record.

  • new attribute - proc getdata - fieldnamerows - like fieldnames but allows data field names to be given one per line.

  • modified attribute - proc getdata - delim - There is now a distinction between whitespace delimitation with quoted strings (spacequoted) and pure whitespace delimitation (whitespace). whitespace is faster, but the default remains spacequoted (space for short) so that existing scripts don't break. More info.

  • new attribute - proc lineplot - gapmissing - allows missing data points to cause a gap in the curve. Similar parameter added to lines and chron prefabs.

  • new attribute - proc scatterplot - clustermethod - control how duplicate points will be clustered.

  • new attribute - proc scatterplot - symfield and symrangefield - allows symbol shape, color, etc. to be controlled by a data field.

  • new attribute - proc scatterplot - dupsleg allows symbol shape, color, etc. to be controlled by degree of duplicity

  • prefabs - added rectangle as a standard parameter. It controls plotting area size (and location, if rendering in paginated postscript).

  • 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). Note: this will break any existing applications that use the lines prefab to render multiple filled curves.

  • The directory for prefab files can now be hard-coded at build time, settable in the Makefile. If this is done then users don't need the PLOTICUS_PREFABS environment variable to be set. This capability is not available on win32 builds.

  • a new prefab called draw has been added. It interprets ploticus draw commands.

  • some new functions, including $numgroup() and $dategroup() which are useful in grouping a set of numbers or dates into bins.

  • the internal name lookup scheme for function names has been changed, and is now a little more efficient.

  • fixed bug: proc bars - stacked bars are drawn incorrectly when minima is non-zero. Eg. stacked vertical bars are incorrect if the plotting area Y min is non-zero.

  • fixed bug: proc bars - stacked bars - clobber bug causing core dump on linux.

  • fixed bug: datetime scaling - floating point rounding problem. Came to light when user tried to autorange on a datetime field and was getting a minima time of 06:59 when it should have been 07:00.

  • increased the size of file pathname variables from 127 to 255 and doing length checking on script file and output file name



    Version: 2.01 (16 Nov '01)

    New features:
    • SVG capabilities. The driver was written by Bill Traill.

    • The Makefile has been reworked. Before building ploticus you edit the Makefile and follow a simple 3-step procedure. There are more build variations than before.

    • Source code can now be compiled on win32 using mingW and maybe other compilers. More info.

    • postscript - ISO Latin1 encoding added, so that European characters may be produced in postscript exactly like they are in the other environments (ascii 128-255).

    • Created graphic files are automatically chmod'ed to mode 644.
    Bug fixes:
    • Some code problems related to the new CGI functionality have been cleaned up. These may have caused problems on some platforms.

    • proc getdata filter - data field names within proc getdata filter statements were not working. Fixed.

    • dates - dates earlier than 1977 causing problems with autorange and probably in other areas. This has been fixed to handle dates back to Jan 1 1800.

    • general - most command line args including var=value pairs were being retained in a 200 character buffer, a problem when command lines are longer. Fixed.

    • proc bars - problems with bar labeling when select is used; also clustering should work with segment bars. Fixed.




    Version: 2.00 (18 Sep '01)

    This major release introduces prefabs for creating standard types of plots directly from the command line, CGI mode, and optional JPEG, WBMP, and FreeType2 support. The script interpreter code has been completely replaced; a general clean-up pass was applied to all code.

    Specific new features:
    • Prefabs

    • CGI mode

    • Optional JPEG, WBMP, and FreeType2 support, however you must link to your own copy of GD library version 1.84 or higher when you build ploticus, and have the other required libs. See the Makefile for more info. Thanks to Michael Tonkin for getting the ball rolling on this. Here's an example that uses a TrueType sans serif font.

    • A new script interpreter. New flow of control operators including: #elseif #else #for #while #setifnotgiven #call #write #shell, etc. Also, increased capacities for data fields and variables (250 chars) and script input lines (3000). The new interpreter involves some script syntax changes that may cause existing scripts to break in some cases.

    • General code clean-up and efficiency improvements (thanks for the suggestions.. who wrote that code, anyway?!).

    • #sql, a new directive for retrieving data directly from an SQL database. This is currently under development, and user-contributed client interfaces to DBMSs such as MySQL and Oracle would be welcome (the code is in dbinterface.c)
    A number of minor improvements and bug fixes are also present:
    • Added: proc areadef autorange - new subattributes selectrows (for selecting rows to be considered when scanning for min and max) and combomode (to allow correct finding of min and max for situations like error bars and stacked bars).
    • Added: proc areadef autorange - now sets variables DATAXMIN, DATAXMAX, DATAYMIN, and DATAYMAX - the actual minima and maxima of data field.
    • Added: proc axis - stubevery attribute
    • Added: proc getdata - pathname attribute, to specify data file name directly without involving cat(1)
    • Added: proc bars - colorfield attribute - set bar color based on a data field
    • Added: proc legendentry - tag attribute
    • Added: various new functions
    • Added: the temp file default path name and default slash character can now be changed in pl.h or in a config file.
    • Added: resource utilization (cpu time and size of created disk files) now can be controlled. Default upper limits are 10 cpu seconds and 5,000,000 bytes. Limits may be altered in pl.h or by using a config file
    • Added: various other config file settings
    • Changed: proc axis - minor changes to avoid orphan date stubs and improper year placement (autoyears)
    • Fixed bug: proc axis - when producing stubs running from negative to positive zero is displayed as a very tiny non-zero value such as 5.2579e-17 due to rounding error.
    • Fixed bug: proc getdata - buffer overflow when 'filter' is used with data records longer than 254 chars, causing garbage result or instability.
    • Fixed bug: proc legend - legend entry text could not be adjusted using textdetails \fCadjust=\fR
    • Fixed bug: proc bars - select omits bars but not labels. Thanks to Dan Tsafrir for finding this one.
    • Fixed bug: $arith() function - detects and issues an error on divide-by-zero.


    Ploticus is 2 years old - 25 Aug '01


    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,    June 14, 2002.