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

• 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.