DPlot Graph Software http://www.dplot.com DPlot Graph Software for Scientists and Engineers Fri, 17 May 2013 23:20:00 GMT en-us Copyright 2001-2013 HydeSoft Computing, LLC. David Hyde admin@dplot.com DPlot Graph Software http://www.dplot.com/logo_small.png http://www.dplot.com 141 45 Graph Software for Scientists and Engineers New filter options and candlestick charts. http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2332

17 May, 2013
Version 2.3.3.8

  • Added ability to make more than 2 passes with the Filter command. This might be useful for very noisy data.
     
  • Added candlestick chart option to Open-High-Low-Close (OHLC) charts.
     
  • Added a "Number of points" option to the "List Peaks" function.
     
  • Bug fix: The recent ATAN2 option for the Z3=f(Z1,Z2) command worked correctly for points on a rectangular grid, but not at all for randomly-spaced points.
     
  • Bug fix: Curve labels might had added uneccessary white space to the right side of a plot.
     
  • Bug fix: With 2D views of contour plots of randomly-spaced 3D points, the legend might have been clipped in a copied bitmap produced by Copy Picture.
     
  • Bug fix: The "More Curve Fits" function might have crashed with some equation forms if you selected a curve to fit that contained a single data point. In this release those "curves" are not selectable.
     
  • Bug fix: Since version 2.3.2.3 there has been a rather obscure bug when using any of the Generate menu commands that result in a new document (FFT or Histogram, for example). If the original document contained any notes and you performed any operation on the generated document's data, then the Undo function did not work properly. Generally on a Redo all X and Y values were set to 0's.
     
  • Bug fix: DPlot crashed when zooming in, then out, with the mouse wheel while pressing the CTRL key (restricting zooming to the X direction) if the plot included multiple Y axes.
     
  • Expanded the FORTRAN DPLOTLIB examples to perform many more functions. Currently this has been done for WATCOM, g77, and Silverfrost (formerly Salford) examples. Others may follow in a future release. (If you use Absoft or Compaq/Intel FORTRAN, please contact me.)
     
  • The ZGrid command of the Excel Add-In is now much more efficient when you simply select column headings rather than the rectangle containing your data. And it now will correctly interpret evenly-spaced Y values when you select column headings and send the data to DPlot as points on a rectangular grid, rather than randomly-spaced points. This is important if your goal is to produce 3D bar charts.
     
]]> New 64-bit interface DLL, improvements to vector plot color keys, several new programming options. http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2332

23 September 2012
Version 2.3.3.2

  • The distribution now includes a 64-bit version of DPLOTLIB.DLL and 64-bit source code examples in C, C#, and VB.NET.
     
  • If a note that is automatically generated for a vector plot with the "Show color key" option is removed on the Note dialog, "Show color key" is turned off. In the last release the note would be regenerated with default options every time you removed it, which was a bit confusing.
     
  • Changed the behavior of the Multiple Plots dialog for printing multiple graphs on the same page. The order of the plots is now the order in which they are selected. In previous versions the plots were arranged in the order they were opened or created; selection order was ignored.
     
  • Added the ability to specify the line width and/or symbol size for the mean/median in Box and Whisker plots, and fixed the previously-ignored mean line width entry for Dot graphs. In addition all lines are now drawn with squared off endcaps for a cleaner appearance.
     
  • Added a mask option to the FillBetween macro/DDE command. This is equivalent to the Copy/Mask radio buttons on the Fill Between Curves dialog.
     
  • The document window caption added with a Caption command is now used as the default filename for a plot, with the addition of a ".grf" extension. If a user then saves the file, this will be used as the default filename. (In previous versions the filename would be blank.)
     
  • Added a line and/or symbol drawing to the Legend/Labels dialog that is updated when the curve index is changed. This should help immediately recognize a curve when the "Curve no." entry is changed.
     
  • Added EditRemoveSpikes macro/DDE command, which performs the same operation as the Remove Random Spikes command on the Edit menu for 2D data.
     
  • Bug fix: If you used Save Preferences on a plot that included version 2.3.3.1's change allowing a color key on vector plots, then subsequently used Get Preferences to read those settings with that same or a similar plot that also used that color key feature, you'd end up with an additional new color key.
     
  • Bug fix: On 2D contour plots for which the legend was not drawn, images copied to the clipboard might have had the right-most X axis label cropped.
     
]]> New options for vector plots. Several miscellaneous changes for developers. http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2331

9 September 2012
Version 2.3.3.1

  • Added several new options for vector plots. You can use up to 8 colors (previous limit was 2), draw a color key, and specify the magnitudes associated with each color. Added an option to the VectorPlot command to include a heading for the optional color key, added several new options to the VectorPlotOptions command, and added a new VectorPlotColors command.
     
  • XY and XYXY macro/DDE commands will now accept coordinates in the text placeholder form $X(i,j), $Y(i,j). Previous versions would accept only numbers.
     
  • Added options to the Directory macro/DDE command that allow you to set the default directory to the last folder used by manual File Open, Append, or Save As commands.
     
  • Modified the behavior of the Histogram and SwitchX macro/DDE commands so that the active document for any subsequent macro commands becomes the newly-created document. In the case of SwitchX this only applies to creating a new document. For macros this change is straightforward:

    Histogram(100)
    XAxisLabel("This is a new document")
     
    will result in "This is a new document" being used as the X axis label for the newly-created document. For DDE (i.e. dplotlib.dll calls to DPlot_Command) it requires a few extra steps. In C:
     
    char szNumber[32];
    DWORD dwSize;

    DPlot_Command(DocNum,"[Histogram(100)]");
    dwSize = sizeof(szNumber);
    DPlot_Request(0,"DocumentNumber",szNumber,&dwSize);
    DocNum = atoi(szNumber);
    DPlot_Command(DocNum,"[XAxisLabel(\"This is a new document\")]");
     
  • Bug fix: Including the "Coefficient of variation" in the Group Summary of 1D plots caused DPlot to crash if the mean of any group was 0. (Essentially an untrapped divide by 0 error.)
     
]]> Added support for Delphi programs calling DPLOTLIB.DLL. New status bar entries for 3D/4D plots. http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2328

1 July 2012
Version 2.3.2.8

  • Added support for Delphi for calls to DPLOTLIB.DLL. All code has been provided by Serge Astaf'ev. Thank you, Serge! DPLOTLIB example programs and source (all supported languages) are now included with the distributions for the full version of DPlot and may be found in the \DPLOTLIB folder below dplot.exe.
     
  • Added Xmin, Xmax, Ymin, and Ymax to the status bar display for 3D/4D plots. These values are for the visible portion of the plot, which might have been changed by zooming or by using the Extents/Intervals/Size command.
     
  • Added $VZMIN, $VZMAX, $VZAVG, $VXMIN, $VXMAX, $VYMIN, and $VYMAX text shortcuts. The latter four correspond to the values mentioned above. The first 3 correspond to the Z values shown in the status bar in previous versions.
     
  • The X values consisting of times are always sequential General Options setting was previously ignored for data sent to DPlot via DDE (Excel Add-In, for example). So if your input times passed through midnight one or more times, the plot was a jumbled mess with a maximum extent of 1 day.
     
  • Bug fix: The sequential time setting mentioned above was respected for Copy/Paste operations but was handled incorrectly, with 24 (hours) added to input values rather than 1 (1 day). This bug came up when adding the Time of day (fractional days) number format.
     
  • Bug fix: If you moved the legend of an XY plot outside the extents of the plot, the legend might get clipped when printed, though there was plenty of room on the page if the entire plot was shifted in the opposite direction.
     
  • Bug fix: The "Y=A+B*ln(X)+C*(ln(X))^2+..." equation form of the "More Curve Fits" plugin failed for non-positive Y values.
     
  • Bug fix: The Differentiate command flubbed the first X value for the quadratic method unless Replace existing curves was checked.
     
]]> Improved bitmap image export http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2326

8 June 2012
Version 2.3.2.6

  • Better results for saved bitmap images on Windows Vista and later Windows versions.
     
    DPlot now uses a workaround for a Windows problem when saving bitmap images with a positive resolution value. On most desktop systems Windows correctly reports the physical size of the screen, which is used to scale line widths, symbol sizes, position for labels, etc. On (at least) Windows 7, Windows reports a very wrong value for that width (for example a 16 inch wide display is reported as over 26 inches wide). This error resulted in distorted bitmaps saved on these systems if you used a resolution setting over 100 dpi. On Windows Vista and later versions, DPlot now ignores that value and estimates the physical screen width based on a 100 dpi screen, which coupled with the following change makes bitmap images saved in DPlot consistent regardless of comptuer system.
     
  • Saved bitmap image sizes should now be consistent on all systems.
     
    When saving bitmap images with a resolution setting greater than 100 dpi, DPlot now scales the bitmap dimensions up by <resolution>/(100 dpi). Previously DPlot used <resolution>/<screen resolution>. Although consistent with the gimmick used to create high resolution images, this resulted in inconsistent bitmap sizes saved on different systems with the identical save settings.
     
  • X,Y|,Z| Labels are now saved to and restored from preference files.
     
  • The Find Volume Under Surface command now also calculates the average Z for points above and below the specified base Z.
     
  • All plugins distributed with DPlot now take double-precision arrays (8-byte floating point) rather than single-precision (4-byte). Single-precision plugins from other sources are still supported, though not recommended for plugin authors for reasons that follow.
     
    When first released and for several years after, DPlot stored all data as single-precision floating point numbers (4 bytes) rather than double-precision (8-bytes), and the plugin modules distributed with DPlot also worked with single-precision values. This was done solely to reduce the memory requirements of DPlot. Since switching to double-precision, DPlot will work with either single- or double-precision plugins, and for the most part this works well. An exception to this was recently pointed out by a user for the Baseline Shift plugin: the user had time values in the neighborhood of 1311 seconds with a time step of 24 microseconds. Simply converting these times to single-precision and back to double-precision caused a rather severe precision problem with decimal places wiped out, even though the plugin did not operate on the time values at all. All plugins now distributed with DPlot are double-precision. This effects the Baseline Shift plugin and also the Hi-Techniques Win600 file import plugin.
     
]]> Improved default legend for several operations, improved step-plot function, better handling of NaN's in text files. http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2324

13 May 2012
Version 2.3.2.4

  • Added DeleteImage macro command, which removes images added with a previous InsertImage command or the Insert Image command on the Options menu.
     
  • Amended calculation of $MEAN, $STDEV, and similar placeholders to take account of Amplitude Limits settings. Points outside those limits are now ignored.
     
  • Amended legend generation for Y=f(X) and similar commands for polar coordinates. For polar plots, X or x are replaced by θ and Y or y are replaced by r. Note that this substitution only takes place if Polar Coordinates has been specified before generating the new curve.
     
  • Expanded the capabilities of the Differentiate a Curve command. You may now perform this operation on multiple curves and optionally replace the source curves with the result. If the source curve has a legend then the output curve's legend is set to "∂/∂x( <legend> )". Similarly, the legend for a curve created with the Integrate a Curve command will now be set to "∫<legend>".
     
  • Amended behavior of ColumnsAre macro command. [ColumnsAre(0)] did esentially nothing in previous versions: the "Specify Columns to Plot" dialog was still shown if that was the default setting. You could only bypass that dialog by specifying all of the column numbers. In this version [ColumnsAre(0)] results in the same behavior as not checking "Pick Columns to Plot" box: X values are read from the first column and subsequent columns are used for Y values all sharing the same X.
     
  • When saving tab- or comma-separated text files, DPlot always wrote dates using "M/d/yyyy" format. This made alignment in text editors problematic, but worse, made the files unworkable for reading into DPlot if you had set Assume input dates are of the form d/m/y under the General Options menu command. This version uses either "MM/dd/yyyy" or "dd/MM/yyyy" date formatting.
     
  • Added a "Backward" option to the "Make Step Plot" plugin module on the Generate menu.
     
  • Bug fix: DPlot has for many versions interpreted "NAN", "nan", "NaN" as "not a number" (a divide by zero or other math error) in text files. So it was interpreted as a number, though an illegal one that was skipped over. This worked fine unless you had a column of labels with one or more entries containing that sequence, e.g. Nancy or Financial. In that case DPlot would usually decide that the next line was where the data started, since the data types didn't match (label vs. number). This version is a bit smarter about detecting NaN's. NaN's are detected for "NAN", "nan", or "NaN" in a 3 (and only 3) character column, and for "#QNAN;" in any position, which is common in Campbell Scientific Datalogger files.
     
  • Bug fix: If "Time of day (fractional days)" number format was used on date and time values then only the time (not the date) was displayed in the Extents/Intervals/Size dialog. When you clicked OK DPlot attempted to read a date and time from the text boxes and set the date to 0 (December 31, 1899). In this release DPlot still displays times only, but preserves the initial date and adds it back to text box values on exit.
     
]]> New 3D options for List Peaks, modification to plugin interface to respect "Amplitude limits" settings, several bug fixes. http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2323

31 March 2012
Version 2.3.2.3

  • Added a "Hide" option for individual reference lines.
     
  • For licensed users only, added a file import plugin for Pacific Instruments BEU files.
     
  • "List Peaks in Range" now works with 2D views of 3D and 4D surface plots, in addition to XY plots.
     
  • Modified the Polynomial Curve Fit and Histogram menu commands to ignore points with Y values outside the limits set with Amplitude Limits.
     
  • Applied the same Amplitude Limits change to all Generate menu plugins that produce new data in the same plot (as opposed to replacing existing data or creating a new document). (For plugin authors, you must use version 4 of the plugin interface to take advantage of this change. Contact us if you have any questions about this.)

    For Generate menu plugins that produce a new document, all points are preserved but the Amplitude Limits settings, if any, are now applied to the new document. Note that depending on what the plugin does, the new data may still be influenced by Y values outside the limits. If that is a problem, crop those values with the Crop or Clip Y commands on the Edit menu before using the plugin.

  • Added a DeleteNote macro/DDE command to delete notes previously added with the various TextNote commands or the Add/Edit Note menu command.
     
  • Most 3D/4D settings are now preserved when creating a new surface plot using Generate Mesh.
     
  • Removed inapplicable right-click menu items for bar charts (line style, symbol style and size)
     
  • Bug fix: DPlot did not properly save text notes with embedded \n sequences (new line) that were added with NoteText, TextNote, TextNote3D, or TextNoteEx commands to DPlot files. When re-reading such a file DPlot would lose track of the end of the note and usually complain about an unsupported keyword.
     
  • Bug fix: Tab alignment in text notes did not work properly in lines containing control codes (subscripts, underline, etc.)
     
  • Bug fix: Legend entries generated by DPlot commands (rather than those typed by the user) might not have been saved properly to comma- or tab-separated value files, perhaps leaving off a trailing quotation mark. This made then opening the files in Excel problematic.
     
  • Bug fix: Curve labels might have been cropped in images copied to the Clipboard or saved as image files with "Crop white space" checked.
     
]]> Improvements for multiple-column text files (e.g. CSV files) http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2322

12 February 2012
Version 2.3.2.2

  • Improvements for multiple-column text files (e.g. CSV files):
    • DPlot now handles up to three column heading lines. If more than one column heading line is found ("found" meaning a line determined to contain text labels contains as many comma‑, tab‑, or semicolon‑delimited columns as the data), the associated legend or axis label entry will include a comma between respective heading entries.
       
    • In previous versions title lines not surrounded with double-quotation marks were truncated at the first comma, if a comma was present. In this release the entire line is used.
       
  • Added angle from horizontal output to the "Distance from..." menu command for 2D data.
     
  • Added a check against too many (too many in this case being an arbitrary >2000) tick marks/grid lines for XY plots. If the "Specify Interval" setting would result in more than 2000 grid lines, DPlot turns off that setting and automatically picks an interval on both axes.
     
  • Bug fix: 3D/4D plots with "Label every __" (contour level) might have crashed after performing an operation (e.g. Operate on Z) that resulted in the contour levels being reset to a value smaller than the "Label every __" value.
     
  • Bug fix: The Playback command did not show line segments in the legend of a plot.
     
  • Bug fix: Copied bitmaps and metafiles were forced to be wide enough to accommodate the unformatted title lines and axis labels. In other words, the calculated width included all formatting codes. This might have resulted in bitmaps or metafiles having too much white space at the left and right sides of the plot.
     
]]> Improvements to SRTM file import, improved support for output to Adobe PDF print driver on Windows 7, new options for modifying/creating data using "Operate on..." menu commands. http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2320

12 November 2011
Version 2.3.2.0

  • "Standard error about the line" feature of the Polynomial Curve Fit command now includes values for both base 10 logarithm and natural logarithm if a logarithmic Y scale is input.
     
  • Added a "Previous point" option to the Differentiate command on the Generate menu. This method calculates the derivative as yj' = (yj - yj-1)/(xj - xj-1)
     
  • Added the ability to hide individual legend entries in XY plots (but not the associated curve).
     
  • The SRTM file import plugin now takes the northeast corner of the area of interest as input rather than the width/height in seconds.
     
  • The "Distance from" command on the Info menu now behaves in the same way for 3D data viewed in 2D with "Degrees, Minutes" or "Degrees, Minutes, Seconds" number formats as it does for XY plots: distance is reported in miles, kilometers, and nautical miles.
     
  • Added descriptions to the DPlot Help file for Generate plugins that are distributed with DPlot. (Note that several of these plugins have their own more complete Help files accessible from the associated plugin dialog box.)
     
  • If you previously used the Save Preferences command on a plot containing one or more notes, subsequent use of the Get Preferences command with that settings file would create new note(s), even if those notes were identical to those already present (location, text, various settings).
     
  • You may now add reference lines to 2D views of 3D data.
     
  • Modified the Operate on X and Operate on Y commands to add a shortcut for the 1-based point index J. For example, X=0.25*j will make X values evenly-spaced at 0.25: 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, etc. This shortcut is only valid for 2D data.
     
  • Inserted code to properly not prompt the user for a filename when using [FilePrint("Adobe PDF","<filename>")] on 64-bit versions of Windows.
     
  • Added a switch for 3D and 4D data to suppress the default behavior of drawing > and/or < symbols in the legend when the corresponding data extent was greater/less than one contour interval than the high/low contour level. Modified the ContourLegend macro/DDE command to take account of this capability.
     
  • DPlot Viewer now includes the Hide Curves and Unhide all Curves commands on the View menu.
     
  • Previous versions did not allow you to set the number format for the amplitude axis on 4D surface or scatter plots. This version does.
     
  • Bug fix: The Move to top and Move to bottom buttons on the Reorder Curves dialog have never worked properly.
     
  • Bug fix: The EditFilter macro command could only be run on one curve at a time, regardless of what you specified with the SelectCurve command.
     
  • Bug fix: The SRTM plugin did not correctly handle west longitudes and south latitudes if you opened one of these files by drag/drop or by double-clicking the file in Explorer. (It worked as expected when using File>Open.)
     
  • Bug fix: The S8 component of the Option 4 low-pass filter had an error in the two-pass option.
     
  • Bug fix: A change in version 2.3.1.6 to handle lots of data points in bar charts (lots being defined as more than the number of pixels across the plot) broke horizontal bar charts.
     
  • Bug fix: Under some circumstances the function parser would crash with an equation containing the sequence "+-", as in "Y=2.3*X+-0.5*X^2". In this release "+-" is properly handled as "-" and "--" as "+".
     
]]> Several bug fixes, number format changes for 4D surface and scatter plots. http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2317

6 August 2011
Version 2.3.1.7

  • The Number Formats command now works as you'd expect with the Z and amplitude values.
     
  • The Move/Copy Curves dialog is now resizable, to help accommodate long names for existing graphs.
     
  • Bug fix: Several dialog boxes incorrectly interpreted "Time of day (fractional days)" number format as "Time of day (hours)", so that the associated coordinate was off by a factor of 24.
     
  • Bug fix: Reference lines with "At Value" set to "X2=" or "Y2=" were in some cases not saved properly, and when re-read had "At Value" set to "X=".
     
  • Bug fix: Negative amplitudes on a stacked bar chart might have resulted in one-pixel gaps between negative bars.
     
  • Bug fix: Bar charts crashed if a plot included only a single point or if you selected Edit Data on an empty plot for which Bar Chart scaling had been selected.
     
]]> Several bug fixes http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2314

3 July 2011
Version 2.3.1.4

  • Bug fix: For 2D contour plots of random 3D data, if you unchecked "Label every major line" then an uninitialized data problem might have caused a crash.
     
  • Bug fix: If multiple XY curves existed and you deleted any curves other than the last, DPlot might have fouled up curve associations, e.g. a point label previously associated with curve 5 might now be associated with curve 4.
     
  • Bug fix: With a negative tick mark interval (decreasing values from left-to-right or bottom-to-top) DPlot might have displayed 0 as some very small number, e.g. 2.2546E-16.
     
]]> Improved handling of inserted images http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2313

11 June 2011
Version 2.3.1.3

  • DPlot generally does a better job of preventing images placed outside plot extents from being clipped. On your display those images might still be clipped depending on plot size, image size and location, but should not be clipped within saved or copied bitmaps or metafiles.
     
  • Bug fix: Graphs containing large filled areas and copied to the Clipboard or saved as a metafile might have caused DPlot to crash. Apparently there is an undocumented limitation with standard metafiles and painted regions which you dare not exceed. The fix is to skip copying a standard Windows metafile to the Clipboard and not show "Windows metafile" in the "Save as type" list if any fill regions are used. Enhanced metafiles are still copied to the Clipboard and saved as before.
     
  • Bug fix: The "More Curve Fits" plugin module might have crashed with an untrapped overflow error when using the equation form y=A + BeCx.
     
]]> 4D scatter and surface plot commands added to the Excel Add-In http://www.dplot.com/revisions.htm#R2311

28 May 2011
Version 2.3.1.1

  • Modified Average All Curves and Median of All Curves commands to only operate on visible (as opposed to hidden) curves.
     
  • Added the complementary error function ERFC to the functions available with Y=f(X) and similar commands. The complementary error function is defined as erfc(x)=1 - erf(x).
     
  • The List Peaks command now includes median, skewness, and kurtosis values (for Y in XY plots, Z in 3D plots, amplitude in 4D plots). Median, skewness, and kurtosis are also output for "List Peaks Within a Range" on XY plots. Also for the latter command, added a bit of slop so that plot extents would be included in the desired extents. In previous versions in most cases the low or high extents would not be exactly equal to the corresponding plot extents, due to roundoff error in converting mouse coordinates to plot coordinates.
     
  • For file type D (multiple column text files, XY data) added a Heading rows have prefix entry to the Open dialog box. This allows you to specify a prefix character string that tells DPlot that any line including this prefix is definitely not data. In previous versions it was possible to confuse DPlot about where the data started if the heading contained information that could be confused as columns of numbers.
     
  • For 4D surface and scatter plots, you may now specify a label for the 4th dimension. If used, this label will be drawn at the top of the legend using the legend font. Added corresponding AAxisLabel macro/DDE command.
     
  • Added "4D Surface" and "4D Scatter" commands to the Excel Add-In.
     
  • Added Poincare Plot optional plugin for the licensed version.
     
  • Bug fix: When pasting 4D data, DPlot erroneously used the 4th column heading as the Z axis label.
     
  • Bug fix: Under some circumstances the legend in 3D/4D plots might have been cropped when copying to the Clipboard, and the same problem might have left out or inappropriately cropped the date in the upper right corner and/or the filename in the lower right corner.
     
  • Bug fix: If you used a second X axis at the top of a plot (via the Multiple Axes command) and set the number format for the lower X axis to "None", the upper X axis values might have overlapped any title lines.
     
  • Bug fix: In some cases date/time groups on the Specify Columns to Plot dialog were not drawn, appearing as blank columns.
     
  • Bug fix: In previous versions for 4D data the "Always auto-adjust scale factors for 3D plots" in many cases used the extents of the amplitude (4th dimension) rather than Z to find appropriate scale factors. This might have resulted in exceptionally tall & skinny or short & wide plots.
     
]]>