Gnuplot Version 5.4.3 Release Notes

===================================

This release contains bug fixes and a few new features back-ported from the

development version. The most notable fix improves handling of piped input

on Windows. Gnuplot development is tracked in a git repository on SourceForge.

You can generate a complete history of changes using "git log"

after downloading:

git clone -b branch-5-4-stable git://git.code.sf.net/p/gnuplot/gnuplot-main

Release Notes date: 24-Dec-2021

Changes in 5.4.3

================

* NEW "set pm3d border retrace" will use quadrangle color for the border

* NEW "nogrid" flag for plots to opt out of dgrid3d processing

* NEW option "above|below y=<val>" for "plot with fillsteps"

* NEW "set style histogram nokeyseparators" suppress blank key entries Bug #2473

* CHANGE always allow palette color for non-plot elements of 2D plot

* FIX contours were incorrectly allocated space in the key even if "notitle"

* FIX evaluation of unary minus in front of ternary operator Bug #2468

* FIX arm and s390 require "signed char" Bugs #2467 #2450

* FIX range errors if "smooth csplines" applied with x-axis reversed Bug #2465

* FIX handle various corner cases found by fuzzing

* FIX textcolor should accept "linetype N" Bug #2459

* FIX Windows: handling of Window messages for piped input Bugs #2204 #2412

* FIX aquaterm: auto-configuration use of Frameworks Bug #2419

* FIX qt: pm3d quadrangle borders for transparent surfaces

* FIX png/gif: gdlib auto-configuration issues

* FIX dumb: limit enhanced text markup to single-line vertical displacement

Features introduced in 5.4.2

============================

* NEW in "using" context, $# means "number of columns in current data line"

* NEW define on program entry: I = sqrt(-1) = {0.,1.}

* NEW support input data that uses epidemiological date-week formats

* NEW optional fillcolor for "set key opaque"

* NEW provide and document use of a plugin to provide uigamma function

Features introduced in 5.4.1

============================

* NEW "with rgbimage" and "with rgbalpha" accept single column ARGB input

* NEW keyword "smooth kdensity period <val>"

* NEW time format %tD encodes days relative to time 0

* NEW pm3d quadrangles in 2D projection are clipped smoothly to x and y

Features introduced in version 5.4

==================================

* Support for 64-bit integer arithmetic

o All evaluation of expressions and functions uses 64-bit arithmetic

if supported by the hardware platform.

o Integer overflow is detected and handled according to user preference.

* Voxel grids

o Gnuplot now supports operations based on 3D grids of voxel data.

o The current content of one or more voxel grids can be referenced by

splot commands to assign colors or other properties to plot elements.

o Data in a voxel grids can be plotted by splot styles dots, points,

or isosurface.

* Pixmaps as objects

o "set pixmap" allows import of a png/jpeg/gif image as a pixmap that

can be positioned anywhere in a plot or on the page. Unlike plotting

"with image", pixmap objects retain their original aspect ratio and

size independent of axis scaling or rotation.

Example: http://gnuplot.info/demo_5.4/pixmap.html

* New plot styles and plot options

o 3D plot style "with polygons" reads polygon faces from a data file.

These can be used to create a surface or to describe a solid object.

Example: http://gnuplot.info/demo_5.4/polygons.html

o "splot $voxelgrid with isosurface" creates a tessellated 3D surface

enclosing voxels above a requested threshold level.

Example: http://gnuplot.info/demo_5.4/isosurface.html

o "set spiderplot" selects a new plotting mode for creating spider

plots, also known as radar charts. These are essentially parallel

axis plots in which the axes are arranged radially rather than

vertically.

Example: http://gnuplot.info/demo_5.4/spiderplot.html

o Plot styles "with circles" and "with boxes" can be used in 3D plots.

Example: http://gnuplot.info/demo_5.4/3Dboxes.html

o 2D plot style "with arrows" is a variant of "with vectors" in which

each arrow is specified by x:y:length:angle rather than x:y:dx:dy.

o pm3d surfaces can have individual fill styles and separate top/bottom

fill colors.

Example: http://gnuplot.info/demo_5.4/hidden_compare.html

o pm3d option "noclipcb" causes quadrangles with palette color outside

cbrange to be omitted from the plot rather than being assigned a

color clipped to cbmin or cbmax.

o Contour line types can be customized.

Example: http://gnuplot.info/demo_5.4/custom_contours.html

* New data pre-processing filters

o "smooth zsort" sorts 2D points on values in a 3rd column to determine

their drawing order. In combination with using palette colors, this

facilitates highlighting outliers in a crowded scatter plot.

* New commands and command options

o Voxel grid commands "set vgrid", "set vxrange", "vclear", "vfill"

and voxel().

o New options "set walls" and "set grid vertical" for showing the

xy, xz, and yz planes in 3D plots.

o "set table separator {tab|comma|"char"}" and "plot with table"

can be used to create csv files.

o Array size can be implicit if an initializer is present, e.g.

Array A = [1,2,3]

o Extra lines of text or symbols in the key can be added by

substituting "keyentry" in place of a filename or function in

plot and splot commands.

o User-specified interpretation of mouse coordinates.

See map-projection demos.

o The "load" command can input commands from a data block as an

alternative to reading them from a file.

o "set datafile columnheaders" causes the first line of input to be

read as strings rather than as data values. This is equivalent to

"set key autotitle columnheader" but does not affect generation of

key entries. Column headers are collected into an array of strings

by any subsequent "stats" commands.

o "set view projection {xz|yz}"

* New terminals and terminal options

o New latex terminal "pict2e" supersedes older terminals "latex",

"emtex", "eepic", and "tpic", which are no longer built by default.

o The "pstricks" terminal now supports current gnuplot features

including RGB colors, transparency, filled polygons, and boxes.

o The "pcl5" terminal now supports current gnuplot features.

o The "texdraw" terminal has been updated.

o The "windows" terminal now uses Direct2D rather than GDI/GDI+.

o The "dospc" and "svga" DOS terminals now support interactive

terminal and mouse input.

* Other new features

o Enhanced text mode accepts the escape sequence \U+xxxx (where xxxx

is a 4 or 5 character hexadecimal) to represent a Unicode code point

that is converted to the corresponding UTF-8 byte sequence on output.

o Plot titles are evaluated _after_ plotting, rather than before.

This allows the title to reference values generated while plotting.

o Hypertext from "set label ... hypertext" is sent to the clipboard

on left mouse-click.

o Time/date input recognizes format %p to handle am/pm field

o Support for multiple textbox styles

o Built-in modified Bessel functions (besi0 besi1 besin)

o Built-in order N Bessel functions of the 1st and 2nd kind (besjn besyn)

* Changes/Differences to previous gnuplot versions

o Plot style "with parallelaxes" has revised syntax to match

histogram and spiderplot commands. There is no longer a limit

on the number of axes in a plot, and iteration is possible:

E.g.: "plot for [column=1:N] DATA using column with parallelaxes"

o pm3d filled area quadrangles are clipped smoothly to the current

zrange. This affects pm3d surfaces and the faces of 3D boxes,

polygons, etc.

Example: http://gnuplot.info/demo_5.4/pm3d_clip.html

o Imaginary values returned by the "using" specifier of a 2D plot

are treated as undefined values (NaN). This was already true for

function plots and for 3D data plots.

o The "set fontpath" command is deprecated (only affects PostScript).

o Since the "latex" and "eepic" terminals are deprecated, the

tutorial for using them is no longer included with the distribution.

Notes for packagers and testers

================================

Obsolete or deprecated components

---------------------------------

The "gnuplot mode" elisp and TeX files for use with emacs are now

maintained as a separate project: https://github.com/bruceravel/gnuplot-mode

so there is no longer a configuration option --with-lisp-files.

LaTeX-related terminal drivers latex, emtex, eepic, and tpic are no longer

built by default. Their closest equivalent is the new pict2e terminal, but

LaTeX users who want support for the full range of gnuplot plot styles are

recommended to use the cairolatex or tikz terminals.

The Japanese man page is provided both in eucJP and UTF-8 encodings.

Installation into appropriate directories is left to packagers.

Configuration options for interactive use

-----------------------------------------

The 5.4 source code supports three primary cross-platform interactive

modes in addition to several platform-specific modes.

1) Qt

The qt terminal supports interactive display with menu-driven

output to png, svg or pdf. If either Qt4 or Qt5 is detected by the

configure script, this will be the default terminal. It is now the

fastest and most full-featured interactive terminal option.

To disable this terminal:

./configure --without-qt

To force use of Qt4 even if Qt5 is present:

./configure --with-qt=qt4

2) Cairo/pango/wxWidgets

This set of terminals includes pngcairo, pdfcairo, epscairo, and cairolatex

for output to a file. The wxt terminal provides interactive display

All of these will be built by default if the configuration script finds

the required libcairo, libpango, libcairo, libwxgtk, and related

support libraries

To disable these terminals:

./configure --without-cairo

./configure --with-cairo --disable-wxwidgets

3) X11 (the "classic" interactive interface)

This used to be the preferred interactive interface, but the newer

wxt and qt terminals offer nicer output and a wider range of features.

Options for output to files

---------------------------

Of course the terminals (output modes) present in previous gnuplot versions

are also still available. These include, among many more obscure options:

- png/jpeg/gif output via libgd

- PostScript (*.ps or *.eps)

- Many flavors of TeX/LaTeX output, including TikZ and ConTeXt

- Bitmapped output to support older devices (e.g. HP deskjet, epson, and

seiko printers, pbm bitmapped graphics files) is available if needed

but is no longer configured in by default.

./configure --with-bitmap-terminals

Output of inline graphics to xterm or linux console terminal emulator

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The sixel or sixelgd terminals display graphics in-line with the commands

typed on a suitable terminal emulator. For example "xterm -ti 340"

emulates a vt340 with sixel color graphics. The yaft terminal emulator

can be run at linux console level with no x11 or other windowing system

active.

Options for generating interactive plots for web display

--------------------------------------------------------

- Mouseable output for display on the web can be created using either

the canvas terminal (HTML5 2D canvas element) or the svg terminal.

Both allow zooming, toggling plot elements on/off, and user-scriptable

hot keys.

Other Notes

===========

Installation

------------

You can download a source tarball for the current gnuplot version

from the gnuplot development site on SourceForge.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot

Installation instructions are available in the source itself; the short

version for linux/unix-like systems is to unpack the tarball and then

<PRE>

build it:

cd gnuplot-5.4.3 ; ./configure ; make

test it:

make check

install it:

make install

</PRE>

Pay careful attention to the output of the ./configure script.

It may indicate that some output drivers have been omitted because the

necessary support libraries were not found. In general you need to have

previously installed the "*-devel-*" versions of these libraries.

Support

-------

Please report all bugs and installation problems to the bug tracker

on SourceForge:

https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/bugs/

Development

-----------

Gnuplot development is ongoing. The development branch contains preliminary

implementations of new features. The current development version is 5.5

(odd minor number) and will eventually be released as version 5.6 or 6.0

(even minor number). Bugfixes to version 5.4 will appear in patchlevel

releases 5.4.1, 5.4.2, etc., approximately twice a year or as needed

to correct a serious problem.