Release notes and current issues


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Manual page for Release_notes_and_current_issues(PL)
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    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.


    Release notes for earlier versions




    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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    Copyright Steve Grubb


    Markup created by unroff 1.0,    March 05, 2002.