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Gnuplot Version 5.4.1 Release Notes
===================================
This release contains bug-fixes and a few changes back-ported from the
development version.
Release Notes date: 01-Dec-2020
Changes 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
* CHANGE increase svg coordinate precision to two decimal points Bug #2369
* FIX y autoscaling of default "with filledcurves" Bug #2294
* FIX placement of mirrored x and y tics in mode 'set view projection ...'
* FIX pm3d lighting calculation for degenerate quadrangles
* FIX botched deprecation of old syntax for "call" arguments Bug #2298 #2368
* FIX pm3d "depthorder" affects 'set obj polygon' with >4 vertices Bug #2297
* FIX loss of precision for asin(x), asinh(x) with real x << 0 Bug #2302
* FIX error handling of bad font name in enhanced text Bugs #2303 #2308
* FIX incomplete domain for complex acosh(x), real x < -1 was treated as NaN
* FIX error handling of fuzzed input Bugs #2306 #2307 #2309 #2312 #2344
* FIX add range check for plot of binned data (allows clipping on y)
* FIX "unzoom" applied to autoscaled volatile data
* FIX no default for binary columns needed if there is a 'using' spec Bug #2315
* FIX buffer overflow of enhanced text fragment Bugs #2310 #2311
* FIX qnorm and Hann functions applied in dgrid3d Bugs #2277 #2318
* FIX handling of dashtype given as a string with leading whitespace Bug #2336
* FIX preserve key position across isolated instance of "title at x,y" Bug #2342
* FIX contour labels had spurious point symbols
* FIX allow "pointtype variable" in combination with jitter Bug #2354
* FIX more checks for valid UTF-8 Bugs #2362 #2364
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.
* Fixes since 5.4.rc2 (second release candidate)
o x11: do not drop characters on 'pause mouse close' (Bug #2208)
o qt: clip fillbox (and "clear") to ymax (Bug #2276)
o qt: avoid error messages from Qt 5.15
o tikz: implicit border width of text nodes is always zero (Bug #2275)
o Do not recalculate range of unused y2 axis on refresh (Bug #2274)
o Back out EXPERIMENTAL command "load $DATABLOCK"
o colors in 'splot with image' should not change on zooming
o replace dgrid3d approximation with true Euclidean metric (Bug #2277)
o adjust "set key at graph <x>, <y>" as needed for 2D projection splots
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-5.4.1 ; ./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.
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