## What's new

Version 2.32

Manual page for What's_new(PL)

- Ploticus 2.32 release - __ Aug '05 Download
- What's new in version 2.32
- What's new in version 2.31 and earlier
- Home page: ploticus.sourceforge.net

  ## Cumulative summary of changes that might affect existing/old 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. Any exceptions to this rule are noted here (most are fairly obscure).
  - version 2.31 - the "datematic" feature was added for more automatic handling of date, time, and datetime data. Old default behavior was autorange to exact maxima and minima, and to display one stub every 7 days. New default behavior is for autorange and stub increment to be selected based on context. Script that relied on old defaults may now give different results. Scripts must now specify eg. `xautorange: ... nearest=exact` to get the exact max and min (and see late update 2.31-03)
  - version 2.31 - proc processdata, `action: stats` now can compute stats on the data in one or several data fields given in the `fields` attribute. Previously, a second field specified in the `fields` attribute was taken as an identifier field for MIN_ID and MAX_ID.. now a separate attribute `tagfield` is used for this purpose.
  - version 2.30 - with -csmap (client-side image maps PNG/GIF/JPEG) the default is now for map content to be written to `stdout` since this seems to be what is usually wanted. Previously the default had been for it to be written to a file. Server-side image maps (`-map`) and SVG are not affected by this change.
  - version 2.30 - prefabs - a few changes that might minimally affect existing applications - see "Caution:"
  - version 2.30 - SVG mouseover - the default method for doing mouseover text tooltip bubbles has been improved but it now references two new javascript files.
  - version 2.10 (probably) - the proc processdata `breaks` action requires an invocation of proc usedata to get back to the original data set. This is now explained correctly in the docs.
  - sometime after version 1.39, time values greater than 24:00:00 began to be regarded as invalid (they're invalid for clock times but not for elapsed times). This has been fixed in 2.20 but requires a format such as `hhh:mm:ss` to be specified when working with elapsed times (`hhh` indicates elapsed time, no upper limit).
  - version 2.10 - several obscure changes: config file parameters `sid`, `gid`, and `filesizelimit` dropped; number display format settings dropped from proc page; proc areadef `catcompmethod: fuzzy` no longer supported; proc processdata `stack` is now `no` by default, which might be an issue in scripts that use `originaldata` to access processdata result data set;
  - version 2.03 - pltab no longer supported. However, it is still available from here.
  - 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.

  ## Requested features list

  These items have been mentioned in correspondence (or in some cases dreamed up by myself) but are not currently on the "front burner". It's likely that some of these will be addressed eventually but probably not in the immediate future. If you have interest in taking any of these on, let me know and I will be happy to facilitate.
  - Provide ploticus freetype build (executables) for linux.
  - Right-to-left font support for languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, for ploticus freetype, SVG, etc. This might be best implemented by someone who can read in one of these languages, to verify correctness.
  - PDF output capability
  - additional prefabs
  - star plots (example)
  - legends in tabular or multi-column format
  - a way to define holidays in config file (similar to omitweekends)
  - facilities to make QQ plots easier
  - the ability to run as a persistent daemon and accept commands via named pipe
  - a method for automatic annotation placement, including avoidance of annotation, label, and plot object collisions.
  - more 3-D plots and effects
  - XML script syntax option - the plotting procs fit the xml model easily enough but not sure what to do about flow of control operators such as #if or #for .. #endloop.
  - a mechanism similar to catslide that would allow similar minor adjustment of scaled data placement for any type of axis, not just categories.
  - alternative to 0am for displaying "midnight"
  - proc pie option to produce ring graphs
  data display engine
  Copyright Steve Grubb

  Markup created by unroff 1.0, `` `` August 23, 2005.