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Revision History

Green entries are programming issues, generally concerning DPLOTLIB.DLL and/or the Excel Add-In.
 

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 y_j' = (y_j - y_j-1)/(x_j - x_j-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 "+".
   

7 August 2011
Version 2.3.1.8

• Bug fix: The "fix" for Time of day (fractional days) number format in 2.3.1.7 unfortunately broke all other formats on the Extents/Intervals/Size dialog.
   

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.
   

14 July 2011
Version 2.3.1.6

• Bug fix: DPlot recently added the ability to include bitmap and metafile images on a plot. An effort to ensure that images placed outside the plot extents would not be clipped was poorly-implemented and might have caused title lines to overlap portions of the plot, whether images were imported or not.
   
• Bug fix: The "List Peaks within a Range" command contained a bug that might have caused DPlot to crash since the inclusion of the median calculation.
   
• Bug fix: Bar charts with the bar width 1 pixel wide (which might happen if you have more bars than pixels in your screen resolution) were not drawn for filled bars unless the bars were outlined.
   
• Modified LineType command so that it does not complain if the curve index is less than or equal to 100. In previous versions the LineType command complained if the curve index was greater than the currently-allocated number of curves.
   

8 July 2011
Version 2.3.1.5

• Bug fix: If you used text placeholders in point labels with $X and that placeholder was immediately followed by an open parenthesis, e.g. "$X(sec)", then the placeholder was assumed to be of the form $X(i,j) - the j'th point from the i'th curve. The placeholder in this case was replaced with a 0 (since the array indices made no sense). This version handles this situation correctly.
   

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.
   

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 + Be^Cx.
   

31 May 2011
Version 2.3.1.2

• Bug fix: Version 2.3.1.1 acidentally removed the XYZSurface command from the Excel AddIn while adding the 4D Surface command. XYZSurface returns in this release.
   
• Added Insert Image command to the Options menu. This command allows you to add clipart images (BMP, EMF, GIF, JPG, PNG, TIF) to your plots. This should be considered a beta feature at this point: Images placed within the plot extents will most likely be drawn as expected on all output devices. Images outside the plot extents may be clipped, and will almost certainly be clipped if Specify plot size is not used. This feature currently only works on 2D views of your data, which will likely always be a limitation for image placement in data space, but may be relaxed for location expressed in inches from the top left corner. This command will almost certainly be improved in future releases, but as always, your comments and suggestions are welcome.
   

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 (4^th dimension) rather than Z to find appropriate scale factors. This might have resulted in exceptionally tall & skinny or short & wide plots.
   

10 April 2011
Version 2.3.1.0

• Bug fix: If Print Caption on the Text menu for 1D plots was checked, plots copied to the clipboard might have had the filename overlapping the labels on the horizontal axis.
   
• Bug fix: If you dragged-and-dropped a text file with multiple columns of numbers onto DPlot and Pick Columns to Plot was not the default setting, DPlot saw the first column as Y values with X starting at 0 and incremented by 1, rather than the more usual X in the first column.
   

11 March 2011
Version 2.3.0.9

• Bug fix: This one has been present for a while, unfortunately. On XY plots if you allowed DPlot to pick a tick mark interval (the default), then for large extents a bonehead test and rounding problem might have extended the extents by one interval over those specified when that was not necessary. For example if you specified extents of 0 to 2 million and the default tick mark interval was 100,000, usually the upper extent would be adjusted to 2.1 million. Thanks to Howard Katz of Anatek for pointing out the problem.
   
• Bug fix: Not much of a bug, but the last update included a MessageBox reporting the time required to run an FFT, which of course was meant for our use in updating the Help file topic and should have been removed.
   
• DPlot Jr no longer includes the "Buy DPlot" menu command on the main menu bar. Given how DPlot Jr is used by the majority, this feature wasn't appropriate.
   

6 March 2011
Version 2.3.0.8

• Line breaks are now supported for point labels.
   
• Added Rank plugin to the Generate menu. This feature is roughly equivalent to Excel's PERCENTRANK function.
   
• Added Average Curve with Error Bars plugin to the Generate menu. This plugin produces a new document with Y equal to the mean of all Y values at any X within a user-specified interval, and error bar extents equal to a) the mean + the extreme values, b) the standard error in the Y values, or c) the standard deviation in the Y values.
   
• Added a Disable hide/unhide with middle mouse button option to the General Options screen for those users who tend to inadvertently click the mouse wheel.
   
• Made several improvements to the "Multiple Plots" dialog for printing multiple documents. Documents are now shown in a list box with more room for the document title than the previous collection of 32 checkboxes. Corrected an aspect ratio problem in the layout diagram that might have resulted in a fouled up picture for landscape orientation. Added a "Deselect All" button to compliment "Select All".
   
• Bug fix: 1D plots produced by the Excel Add-In and saved as a bitmap image might have been clipped oddly because of a failure to correctly handle the hidden note in the upper left corner added by the Add-In. This might also have occurred if you added your own hidden notes. If you had this problem, you likely saw too much white space at the top of the plot and the plot possibly being clipped at the bottom. All other plot types worked correctly.
   
• Bug fix: It was possible to clip the legend in 3D views of 3D or 4D data when saving to a high-resolution image.
   
• Bug fix: The Backbone Curve command on the Generate menu sometimes duplicated the first point and skipped the last point in the input.
   
• Bug fix: If you panned a plot with a calendar date scale by using the keyboard arrow keys, and you elected to have DPlot choose the tick mark interval, that interval tended to grow with every pan.
   
• Bug fix: DPlot crashed if on a 1D plot you had one or more non-positive values and opted for logarithmic scaling.
   
• Bug fix: Undo did not work after "unhiding" curves using the middle mouse button.
   

05 February 2011
Version 2.3.0.7

• Expanded on the last update's new feature of hiding a curve with the middle mouse button: If you press CTRL + middle mouse button while pointing to a curve, all curves except the one pointed to will be hidden.
   
• Fixed an annoyance with inserting Symbol characters in text strings. In previous versions the insertion point was placed before the newly-inserted Symbol character(s). In this release the insertion point follows the new characters.
   
• Bug fix: The Reorder Curves command did not mark a file as "dirty", prompting you to save before closing.
   
• Bug fix: DPlot crashed with an overflow error for Y values with amplitudes greater than about 1.34E+154. The error occurred in squaring the amplitude as part of finding the RMS value. (The maximum amplitude that DPlot can handle is the maximum amplitude of an 8-byte floating point number: 2^1024 or about 1.798E+308. In other cases DPlot gracefully balks at numbers exceeding that limit, and now does for RMS.)
   
• Bug fix: Since the inclusion of horizontal error bars, the text boxes for error values on the Error Bars dialog (fixed value, percentage, and custom) have not been updated properly when switching curves. This might have led to inadvertently changing an error value without actually changing anything.
   
• Bug fix: The Delete Points in Box command on the Edit menu failed to reset a flag indicating that X values were evenly-spaced, so that condition was never reevaluated. This worked fine until the graph was saved as a DPlot file. In that case, if the data was originally evenly-spaced DPlot would erroneously save only the start and end X values. Thanks to Robert Duran of Baker Engineering and Risk Consultants for help with the problem.
   
• Bug fix: The Average all Curves command might have given nonsense values for curves that did not have the same range in X.
   
• Bug fix: The Fill Between Curves option for Fill to bottom only for Y <= Yref failed if the last point in a curve was not greater than Yref.
   

22 January 2011
Version 2.3.0.6

• When zooming with the mouse wheel, you may now restrict zooming to the X direction by pressing the CTRL key, or to the Y direction by pressing the SHIFT key.
   
• For XY plots you may now hide a curve by pointing to it and clicking the middle mouse button (mouse wheel on the majority of mice). If the middle mouse button is clicked when the mouse does not point to a curve, all curves are made visible.
   
• Modified "Make Step Plot" plugin (licensed version only) to include an option to center the steps on the input X values. Thanks to Dr. Ian Crawford for the suggestion.
   
• Improved performance of antialiasing. In all previous versions the antialiasing performed for line segments by DPlot was very inefficient with all or portions of line segments that were outside the plot limits (after zooming, for example).
   
• Made a change to the drawing order for XY plots when minor grid lines are used and the minor grid line color is different than the major grid line color: In previous versions the minor grid lines for the Y axis would overlay the major grid lines for the X axis. This was only noticeable when the minor grid lines used a different color than the major grid lines. In this version minor grid lines will not obscure major grid lines.
   
• Bug fix: If multiple Y axes were used, the title for the 2nd Y axis was placed far right enough that it was impossible to overlap any numbers (or dates, etc.) on the X axis. So for dates/times on X, for example, the 2nd Y axis title was positioned much farther to the right than it would be for the default number format. The intent was probably good at one time, but since this same check isn't performed for the primary Y axis it was, at best, overkill.
   
• Bug fix: If "Axes at 0" was checked and grid lines were used on the Y axis, the bottom of the plot would be drawn (actually overdrawn) with the grid line color. This was particularly noticeable if the axes line width was the same as or smaller than the grid line width and used a different color.
   

30 December 2010
Version 2.3.0.5

• Added options for image export. For GIF and PNG images, you can now specify that the plot background color should be transparent. (Whether the target application respects the transparency setting is outside DPlot's control. Google Earth, for one, does honor this setting.) For both GIF and PNG images, antialiasing is forced off and the standard Windows' font antialiasing is turned off. You may get better results saving to 32-bit PNG, particularly when importing images into Google Earth. Updated the SetPluginImageDims macro/DDE command to take account of this new capability.
   
  Note: Whether output is to an 8-bit GIF or 32-bit PNG, all antialiasing (including text) will be turned off. Depending on your needs and what is possible, you can produce a better-looking image by saving the background image, cropped to the appropriate extents, and importing that background image into DPlot rather than going the other way: saving a transparent image in DPlot and importing that image into some other application. In the former case, all DPlot graphics are drawn onto a background image that is already in place, so antialiasing is not an issue: if antialiasing is turned on or you use one of the Windows default antialiasing features for text, those lines/symbols/text will be drawn as expected, with the proper antialiasing. See, for example, the Background Images topic in the blog.
   
• Modified the behavior of tick marks on 2D views of 3D data. If both the X and Y axis number formats are set to "None" and a plot has no X,Y,Z Labels, then tick marks are not drawn.
   
• Bug fix: It was possible to cause DPlot to crash if you used the incorrect number of arguments to a text placeholder (e.g. $X) in an equation.
   

14 December 2010
Version 2.3.0.4

• Bug fix: The "Swap X,Y" command on the Edit menu was inadvertently omitted for 4D surface plots, and did not work for 4D scatter plots.
   
• Bug fix: If you dragged a corner of a 2D plot using the mouse to resize the graph and inverted either the width or height (e.g. dragged the left corner right past the right corner), DPlot would enter an endless loop attempting to draw the plot within a box with a negative dimension.
   
• Bug fix: Corrected a problem that might have caused a crash with 2D views of 3D data on a rectangular grid. If "Show coordinates in popup window when mouse hovers over data point" was checked, DPlot sometimes crashed when working with large data sets due to a division by 0 problem.
   

21 November 2010
Version 2.3.0.3

• Notes are now saved to and restored from preference files.
   
• If you used a non-standard cursor for the "Normal Select" pointer, toolbar tooltips might have been obscured by the cursor in all previous versions.
   
• Toolbar tooltips now use the same font used in your menus. On Vista and Windows 7 this should make the tooltips a bit easier to read.
   
• Bug fix: A change to the plugin interface several releases ago that was intended to clean up unused curves in XY plots was inadvertently applied to all data types. As a result the "Bitmap to 3D" plugin did not display a plot until after you performed some action to edit the data.
   
• Bug fix: Version 2.3.0.2 included a bug which caused the plot background color to be drawn incorrectly for 3D views of points on a rectangular grid.
   

13 November 2010
Version 2.3.0.2

• The $AREA text shortcut now works with 3D and 4D surface plots, reporting the plot's surface area. The resulting text will use the number formatting of the Z axis.
   
• Added the ability to draw the legend for 3D and 4D surface plots on various sides of the plot. Previous versions forced the location to the right side. Currently these options are only available via the right-click menu for the legend and are not supported for scatter plots. The ContourLegend command can be used to set the legend placement.
   
• Added an option for 3D views to display a graphic of the X,Y,Z coordinate axes in the lower left corner of the plot. Currently this option is only available via right-click menu (Orientation Key). NOTE: No effort is made to include this graphic in the clipped region of saved bitmap images or bitmaps/metafiles copied to the clipboard. In other words it might be there; it might not. And it might be cropped. This will likely change in a future release. Like the 3D legend options above, this option is only offered via right-click menu in a quasi-effort to hide it until all the kinks are worked out: it is possible that with this version and using both options that you'll end up with plot attributes overlapping.
   
• Added "Monthly Peak" plugin for the licensed version, which is handy for finding the monthly peak value within a time series (daily cumulative sales figures, for example).
   
• Bug fix: Probability scale with small or large probabilities (less than 0.0001% or greater than 99.9999%) might have resulted in an endless loop.
   

29 October 2010
Version 2.3.0.1

• Bug fix: Another one introduced with version 2.2.9.9 - calendar dates w/ times in text boxes were not interpreted correctly.
   

28 October 2010
Version 2.3.0.0

• Bug fix: Version 2.2.9.9 introduced a bug that broke the keyboard shortcuts for changing the view angles of a 3D plot.
   

26 October 2010
Version 2.2.9.9

• Added "Time of day (fractional days)" number format. The standard "Time of day (hours)" format assumes values are in hours (0=midnight, 1=1AM, etc.). "Time of day (fractional days)" takes input values in fractional days (0 again=midnight,0.125=3AM,0.5=noon, etc.). Other than the obvious (your input times are in fractional days), this is mostly beneficial when swapping data to/from Excel. (Excel always stores times as fractional days, which ended up causing unpredictable problems in many cases with DPlot.) The Add-In now uses the new "Time of day (fractional days)" format for time values. Please note: This new format will be used in lieu of "Time of day (hours)" when reading times from a text file, pasting data from clipboard text, or sending data to DPlot from Excel via the Add-In. Generally this will not be a problem. It may be a problem, though, if you typically modify the X axis values using Operate on X or similar operation, expecting the X axis values to be stored using whole number hours. You can easily check which format is used by right-clicking on any number along the X axis.
   
• Changed dataTaker file import plugin to display all error values (overrange, underrange, etc.) as symbols. Previous versions ignored those values. Also made a simple change to DPlot that erases curves with 0 points on return from a file import plugin, which might occur for any number of reasons. And a bug fix: Corrected a few problems in the dataTaker plugin module that might have resulted in crashes for odd files.
   
• Bug fix: If you opened a file and launched DPlot by double-clicking in Explorer and that file is handled by a file import plugin, DPlot might have attempted to use the last-used file import plugin rather than the appropriate one to process that file.
   
• Bug fix: Eliminated the bivariate interpolation method from the Generate Mesh command for 3D data because it was just too unstable, crashing DPlot in many circumstances. The quadratic interpolation method added with version 2.2.9.1 is completely stable, quite a bit faster, and produces comparable results.
   

7 October 2010
Version 2.2.9.8

• Bug fix: The document window list was shown on the View menu for 4D plots rather than the correct Window menu.
   
• Bug fix: The Define Boundary command did not work with 4D data (only 3D).
   

4 October 2010
Version 2.2.9.7

• The Month number format will now use the full spelling of the month, e.g. "January" rather than "Jan", if the date format includes "MMMM".
   
• The $AREA text placeholder may now include a range in X between which the area is calculated, similar to how the $YMIN, $YMAX, etc. shortcuts work.
   
• Added character-formatting buttons to the X,Y(,Z) Labels feature.
   
• Added "Open" and "Save as" buttons to the Y=f(X), X=f(T), Y=g(T), and Y=f(X,Y1,Y2,...) command screens. This might be handy if you have an operation that you frequently use and you use this command often enough that a particular operation migrates out of the most-recently-used list (where applicable).
   
• Added a "Click to zoom" option to the General Options screen. If checked, you can zoom on 2D plots by clicking and dragging your mouse (without first clicking the Zoom toolbar button). If unchecked, DPlot behaves as before: clicking and dragging pans the plot. Whether checked or not, the keyboard arrow keys may still be used to pan.
   
• For USDA Soil Classifications on triangle plots, changed "Silty Loam" to "Silt Loam" in accordance with the USDA's documentation.
   
• Bug fix: The "Stacked points are..." note in the lower right corner of a dot graph might have overlapped the numbers along the horizontal axis when copying or saving the plot to a metafile format.
   
• Bug fix: Using the Edit Data command on a curve associated with the second (right) Y axis, mouse clicks were scaled to the left axis rather than the right.
   
• Bug fix: One more fix for bar charts similar to that made with version 2.2.9.5. If "Unique colors for each bar" was checked then the same problem with outline pen widths for all but the first bar and non-hollow bars existed.
   
• Bug fix: Point labels using $X, $Y, or $Z shortcuts immediately followed by a non-space character (as in $Ykg) did not work properly.
   
• Bug fix: Error bars on horizontal bar charts were not drawn properly.
   
• Bug fix: When interpreting text files, if the heading lines contained commas, semicolons, or tabs but the data columns were separated by spaces, DPlot would erroneously interpret the first data line as a heading and (usually) use that line as the legend.
   
• Bug fix: Previous versions correctly handled date and time values in the first two columns of text files when the date and time were not delineated with quotation marks or when the date and time group in total was delineated with quotation marks, whether there was an intervening comma or not. But DPlot did not correctly combine a date and time when both groups were individually delineated with quotation marks, as in "10/3/2010","6:45:00 PM". This version correctly handles that combination.
   

11 September 2010
Version 2.2.9.6

• Added menu options and corresponding toolbar buttons for XY plots to draw grid lines in the horizontal or vertical direction only. Modified the GridLines macro command to take account of this new capability.
   
• Bug fix: If you used "Calendar Date" or "Date and Time" number formats on the X axis with a 3D view of 3D/4D data, DPlot might have entered an endless loop while drawing the X axis grid lines and labels. Thanks, Scott Englander, for the assist in tracking this down.
   
• Bug fix: The Normalize command on the Edit menu erroneously demanded that the input curve(s) be sorted in increasing X order. Since the operation is independent of X, sort order is irrelevant.
   
• Bug fix: The Normalize command might not have used the correct minimum and maximum Y values if the plot was produced by a series of calls to the DPLOTLIB function DPlot_AddData in which the min/max values were intentionally not found due to a previous call to the DPLOTLIB function DeferMinMaxCheck.
   
• Bug fix: With a dependent second Y axis on XY plots, DPlot might have allowed too much space on the right side of the plot when figuring out the correct placement of the 2nd Y axis label.
   
• Bug fix: Under some circumstances the "Use N/S/E/W suffix" option for number formatting might have displayed E for N, W for S on 3D surface plots.
   

27 August, 2010
Version 2.2.9.5

• Added "Outline symbols in black" to the Symbol Styles dialog for 3D scatter plots. In previous versions this setting was turned on by default and not optional.
   
• Relaxed the constraints on determining whether all labels would fit along the Y axis. In previous versions DPlot might have skipped over labels when it wasn't strictly necessary to do so.
   
• The coefficient boxes on the Multiple Axes dialog can now accept equations, e.g. "pi/180"
   
• The Equal Intervals command on the Edit menu now allows you to specify a start and stop X value, which might be handy if you want the generated curve to start at some "nice" multiple of the interval. Modified the EditEqualInts command to take into account this new capability.
   
• For 3D scatter plots you may now set the line color drawn between points equal to the color of the first endpoint; in all previous versions the color was forced to black.
   
• Relaxed constraints that prevented DPlot from handling mouse movement messages (displaying coordinates in the status bar, for example) while a DDE conversation was active. This check was done to prevent hogging the processor while another application was attempting to send data to DPlot at a rapid rate. But many legacy applications establish a conversation with DPlot and do not disconnect until the application is terminated. In this release the check is not against a conversation being active, but against adding data via a call to DPlot_AddData. After calling DPlot_AddData DPlot behaves as before: mouse movement messages are ignored until the conversation is terminated.
   
• Bug fix: The lines used for the outline of bars in a bar chart have been fouled up for all but the first bar since the capability of adding error bars was added to DPlot. This might not have been noticeable for thin lines and/or solid fills.
   
• Bug fix: Note placement was fouled up for vertical orientation and either center or right justification.
   

July 28, 2010
Version 2.2.9.4

• Bug fix: A recent change correcting the calculation of the plot size plus axis labels for triangle plots ended up fouling up this calculation for all other plot types, such that axis labels were clipped. The problem was likely not noticeable if you sized the plot with Options>Extents/Intervals/Size, but was quite noticeable if the plot occupied most of the document window. Thanks to Richard Swaim for pointing out the problem.
   

July 17, 2010
Version 2.2.9.3

• Added "Half-tone" and "Invert" buttons for "User-defined" fill patterns on the "Fill Between Curves" dialog box.
   
• Added dot and double-dot accent format controls for all text entries.
   
• Amended the dataTaker .DBD file import plugin to correctly handle the new dataTaker option of saving multiple data sets to the same file.
   
• Legend location and alignment for XY plots are now saved to preference files.
   
• Bug fix: Minor tick mark intervals less than 1/2 month on a date scale might have resulted in an endless loop. Also changed how minor tick mark intervals less than 10 days are handled: in this version the minor tick marks will be drawn at whatever interval exactly divides the interval to the next major (labeled) tick mark by the number of minor intervals, with no consideration given to drawing minor intervals at whole days.
   
• Bug fix: Macro editor misbehaved with Directory or ForFilesIn commands in which the path contained a closing parenthesis.
   
• Bug fix: Triangle plots might have crashed due to an uninitialized data problem if "Specify size" was checked.
   

July 1, 2010
Version 2.2.9.2

• Y=f(X,Y1,Y2,...) now allows you to specify a curve from which all X values will be taken. In previous versions the output curve would always have evenly-spaced points between the from X and to X values. Added FXY1Y2_XFrom macro/DDE command to take account of this new capability. Developers please note: This setting is persistent and might effect the behavior of the AddCurves, Compare, DivideCurves, FunctionOfXY1Y2, Lump, MultiplyCurves, and SubtractCurves commands.
   
• Error bars may now be drawn in a color other than black. You may also specify an error bar frequency on the Error Bars dialog. (Previous versions used the symbol frequency setting). Modified the ErrorBar macro/DDE command to take account of these new capabilities.
   
• Find Intersections dialog is now resizable, which might be handy when working with curves that have a long descriptive legend.
   
• Added ContourResetExtents macro/DDE command, which is equivalent to the "Use actual displayed limits" setting on the Contour Options dialog.
   
• Bug fix: For the last several releases [Color(-2,r,g,b)] has correctly set the color of minor grid lines on XY plots, but was not used to set the border color on 3D/4D plots as described in the Help.
   

June 16, 2010
Version 2.2.9.1

• Removed a vestige from the days when DPlot did not allow you to set the plot background color: If the Windows window background color was the same as the selected grid color, grid color was forced to black.
   
• Added zoom and pan buttons to the Distance from dialog for 2D data.
   
• For XY plots, added $XYMIN and $XYMAX text placeholders.
   
• Added Restrict mouse panning to H/V/45° menu command to the View menu. If checked, then panning a 2D plot by dragging the mouse is restricted to horizontal, vertical, or 45° increments. If this feature is unchecked, as before, you can get this same restriction by pressing the Shift key while dragging.
   
• For the Generate Mesh command, the Extrapolate... checkbox is now disabled for bivariate interpolation, simply because that feature was prone to blow up with nonsense values and/or crash DPlot. Added quadratic interpolation method, for which the output is calculated by applying weighting factors proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance to a selected number of input points.
   
• Bug fix: The "More Curve Fits" function might have crashed with the equation form y=A(x+B)^C if one or more y values were exactly equal to 0.
   
• Bug fix: For bar charts with the Shaded Bars option turned off, the second and all subsequent bars were drawn in black within standard and enhanced metafiles.
   

May 23, 2010
Version 2.2.9.0

• Added a "Show Example Plots" command to the Help menu, which hopefully along with the "How was this graph created?" links within the plots themselves will help new users.
   
• Improved the performance of the Switch Independent Variable command, particularly for large data sets. In previous versions, unless all curves had the same number of points and the same X values at every point, the time required was proportional to N^2, where N = number of points in each curve. In this release if operating on curves for which X is monotonically increasing (which should include almost all data for which this function is meaningful) then the time required is proportional to N rather than N^2. If that doesn't grab your attention... this operation with 1 million points might have taken a bit more that 2 hours before, but should take a bit less than 1 second now on fast processors. Thanks to Richard Swaim for pointing out the problem.
   
• The Excel Add-In now works properly with the 64-bit version of Excel 2010 (as well as, as before, the 32-bit version of Excel 2010 and all previous versions back to Excel 95).
   
• Bug fix: Version 2.2.8.8 introduced a new bug with the FilePrint macro command. As far as we know the bug only affected the Adobe PDF print driver, but it is possible that other printers were affected. The result was either a "StartDoc failed" error message, or a more wordy message concerning missing resources.
   
• Bug fix: This one has been around for a long while. An "optimization" in previous versions of DPlot that based the decision of whether to throw out or keep a saved bitmap of a graph when resizing a document ended up causing strange problems, primarily with very large data sets (for which, of course, the optimization was designed in the first place). You might have ended up with the wrong plot being displayed when you closed a document or activated a different document with the Window menu. This version keeps the good features of that optimization and throws out the bad.
   
• Bug fix: Right-click menu options in DPlot Jr for 3D data were not consistent with DPlot Jr capabilities. (Some right-click menu commands that should not have been shown rightfully did nothing, other right-click commands which should have been shown were not.)
   

May 8, 2010
Version 2.2.8.8

• Added many new options for the new background image feature. The "background" can now be drawn in the foreground. You can specify a global transparency value that is applied to the entire image and/or a transparent background color. Alpha channel in 32-bit PNG images and transparent pixels in GIF and 8-bit PNG images is now handled as you'd expect in an image editor, for both foreground and background images.
   
• Added better support for non-US date separators. In this version the Control Panel sDate entry is interpreted correctly when reading files, pasting data from the Clipboard, or reading dates from text boxes. DPlot continues to accept either a slash or dash as the date separator regardless of the Control Panel setting.
   
• For logarithmic scales, added checks to ensure axis labels do no overlap.
   
• The FFT dialog now allows you to specify the units for the X values of the input. Previous versions forced the units based on an interpretation of the X axis title. This version also allows you to enter units that are not necessarily a measure of time. In that case the FFT will have an X axis label of "cycles/<unit>".
   
• Similarly, added an "other" entry for X units to the Filter dialog, which only serves to change the frequency label for the bandpass and bandstop filters.
   
• The Fill to Y reference line option of the Fill Between Curves menu command now allows you to specify a fill above and/or below the line. Previous versions drew fills both above and below the line (where applicable).
   
• Added Tile Horizontally command to the Window menu. Previously this arrangement could only be achieved by a WindowTile(1) macro command.
   
• Added Apply buttons to several dialog boxes (more to follow) and shifted the placement of the larger dialogs to the upper left corner so that you can better see the effect of your changes when using Apply. For all dialog boxes that include an Apply button, pressing Cancel after Apply reverts to the settings that were in effect when the dialog box was first opened, which differs a bit from previous versions.
   
• Bug fix: For semicolon-separated columns DPlot did not correctly handle files with a trailing semicolon.
   
• Bug fix: RND(<any number less than 1>) crashed. Under the same circumstances you will now get a friendlier "Illegal argument" error.
   
• Bug fix: Printing with the FilePrint macro command resulted in portrait orientation, regardless of whether you had previously used the Page Setup menu command or FilePageSetup macro command to set the orientation to landscape.
   
• Bug fix: In the More Curve Fits module, the procedure always failed with a spurious "Overflow error" for the exponential form Y=A+B*exp(C*X) if B was a negative number. (No overflow actually occurred; the error was due to a faulty check meant to prevent overflows.)
   
• Bug fix: For saved bitmap images (BMP, GIF, PNG, etc.) of 2D surface plots, if you selected Crop white space and the contour legend was shown, the right edge of the image was wide by the legend width. In other words, enough space on the right was added for 2 copies of the legend.
   
• Bug fix: An uninitialized data problem might have caused DPlot to crash for fill region(s) with the Fill to Y reference line option.
   
• Bug fix: Another uninitialized data problem might have broken text shortcuts used in equations within macro commands or text boxes in dialog boxes. For example $XMIN used in a ManualScale command might have been erroneously interpreted as the minimum X for curve 1 rather than the minimum for all curves.
   

24 April, 2010
Version 2.2.8.5

• Added the ability to specify a background image
  GPS-recording with a background image taken from Google Earth
  for 2D graphs (with the exception of polar charts and triangle plots). Added corresponding SetBackgroundImage macro/DDE command.
   
• Added Normalize command to the Edit menu for XY plots, along with corresponding EditNormalize macro/DDE command. This command scales the Y values to 0-1 or 0-100.
   
• Added a right-click menu option for XY plots to "Add $X, $Y Label", which saves a bit of effort over using Edit mode and/or the Label Points command on the Text menu. Labels produced with this command will be framed and opaque. As with all other labels, attributes can be changed with the right-click menu or by double-clicking on the label.
   
• Added right-click menu options for the legend (in XY plots) and text notations to change the anchor point of those objects.
   
• Most-recently-used file list has been expanded from 4 to 8 files. Also took a few steps to avoid duplicate names in this list.
   
• A couple of new mouse operations for XY plots: Ctrl+click on a curve brings up the Symbol/Line Styles dialog with the clicked-on curve selected. Shift+click on a curve brings up the Colors dialog with, again, the clicked-on curve selected.
   
• Added 2 smaller symbol sizes to the right-click menu for curves: 0.05" and 0.075", 4pt and 5pt, and 1mm and 2mm. (The sizes and units shown are dependent on the "Default dimensions" setting.)
   
• For 2D views of 3D data, the axis labels might have overlapped labels added with the X,Y,Z Labels command. (This is still a problem with 3D views; no attempt is made to prevent that overlap. If your labels overlap the corresponding axis title you can shift the axis title with leading \n's).
   
• DPlot is a bit more flexible with tick mark intervals on date scales. In this version you can specify a tick mark interval of 3 or 4 months and that is the interval you'll get. (In previous versions the interval would have been forced to 2 months in both cases).
   
• Modified the behavior of the SetPanFraction macro/DDE command. In previous versions the pan value was forced to the limits 0.01 to 1.0. In this version 0 is allowed. When set to 0, DPlot will not automatically pan a plot when a) X values sent via a call to DPlot_AddData or with one of the XY commands exceed the right extent of a plot and b) the ManualScale command has been used.
   
• Added a bit of syntax checking to the function parser. In previous versions, for example, "exp^5" (rather than "exp(5)") would have crashed rather than returning an error.
   
• Bug fix: In some cases DPlot did not correctly handle text files with one or more lines in which the last data column was blank, but the previous column was not blank.
   
• Bug fix: DPlot did not correctly handle "quoted" column headings in text files that consisted of two successive quotation marks.
   
• Bug fix: Partially-transparent symbols were drawn fully opaque in the legend.
   
• Bug fix: Syntax errors with the Operate on X command on the Edit menu might have resulted in a not especially helpful "No error. How did you get here?" message.
   
• Bug fix: When dragging the corners of a 2D plot to resize, if the document was not maximized and you dragged the cursor outside the document window's client area, the text showing the plot dimensions might have been left on the screen or DPlot might have immediately gone into "pan" mode, drawing a line with arrowhead on the screen that would not go away until the plot was redrawn.
   

3 April, 2010
Version 2.2.8.4

• Added options for reference lines to draw a frame around the reference line label and/or make the label opaque. Modified the RefLine command to take advantage of this new capability.
   
• Added options to 1) Draw contour line labels horizontally. The default is for the label to be oriented with the contour line at the point it is drawn, and 2) Use either black or white for the line labels based on the luminance of the background color for "Both lines and shades". By default the labels will always be drawn in black for this rendering. Added documentation to the ContourLabelLines command to account for these new capabilities.
   
• For Degrees, Minutes and Degrees, Minutes, Seconds number formats, added an option to display N, S, E, or W suffixes with the absolute value of the latitude/longitude. Added NSEW macro/DDE command to control this setting.
   
• Added a right-click menu option for point labels to copy the point label text to the Windows Clipboard. Text shortcuts in the label (e.g. $X, $Y) will be replaced with the corresponding numeric value using the default number format.
   
• Bug fix: The change in version 2.2.8.1 allowing a different color for minor grid lines was ignored for polar plots if you had antialiasing turned on.
   
• Bug fix: On XY plots if you used the right-click "Copy data" command, then pasted that curve into a new document and saved the document with File>Save (rather than Save As), the file was automatically saved to the same name as the original document, overwriting it.
   
• Bug fix: On 2D views of random 3D points, if a triangle (formed by triangulating the input X,Y points) was only 1 pixel wide, then a dot would be drawn regardless of whether the Z value was outside the limits specified by Extents/Intervals/Size.
   
• Bug fix: For saved bitmap images (BMP, GIF, JPG, etc.) with the resolution set to higher than 100 dpi (lower resolution settings are ignored), labels added with Text>X,Y|,Z| Labels might have been incorrectly cropped.
   

15 March, 2010
Version 2.2.8.3

• Bug fix: Aaarrgghhh. One more fix associated with "better" handling of blank columns in CSV and other text files that started in version 2.2.8.1. If you had two or more columns and the data was preceded by a line containing one or more numbers (not necessarily associated with the data but which might have been, for example, the number of following data rows) then DPlot would initially interpret that number as part of the data, but then fail to properly read the file.
   
• Bug fix: Previous versions saved the axis associations of only the first 20 curves to preference files (File>Save Preferences).
   

13 March, 2010
Version 2.2.8.2

• For XY plots, removed restrictions for saving data as CSV. In previous versions all curves had to have the same number of points and identical X values. If either of those conditions were not met then CSV (as well as tab-separated values) was not given as a "Save as type:" option. In this release, if one or more curves has a different number of points or one or more different X values, you can save as CSV provided that all curves are sorted in increasing X order. If a curve does not have a given X, a blank entry is written to the file (two successive commas or two successive tabs). These will show as blank cells when imported into Excel.
   
• Added 14 sieve size options for Grain Size Distribution plots, for ASTM sieves only. These sizes will primarily be useful for those involved in mining operations. For programmers, modified the GrainSizeFlags command to handle this new ability.
   
• Added Datataker DBD file import plugin to the distribution.
   
• Bug fix: For 3D surface plots, "Specify extents" to clip values outside specified Z limits did not work well with custom contour levels.
   
• Bug fix: The Excel Add-In XYYY command took the correct step of shifting curve legends (from column headings) in the case of completely blank columns, but it started the shift one column too soon.
   
• Bug fix: For 2D views of 3D surface plots, the legend might have overlapped title lines and/or the X axis label, particularly for narrow plots (taller than wider).
   
• Bug fix: When saving CSV files for XY plots, if a column heading was blank then DPlot wrote nothing to the file (other than the trailing separator). This caused problems with version 2.2.8.1's new features improving support for blank data entries, such that DPlot might not have figured out in which line the data started. In this release blank column headings are written to CSV files as two successive quotation marks.
   

7 March, 2010
Version 2.2.8.1

• Added a "Expand constants in legend" checkbox to the Y=f(X) and similar dialogs. If checked, constants (A,B,C,etc.) used in equations will be replaced with their corresponding numeric values in the legend (title in the case of 3D surfaces).
   
• For surface plots from randomly-spaced data, DPlot does a better job of selecting which point the mouse is hovering over before displaying a popup note with that point's coordinates.
   
• Improved handling of headings in saved CSV files for XY plots. In previous versions if there was only one curve, the heading was set to the Y axis label (which might have been blank) regardless of whether the curve had a legend entry or not. In this version, when only one curve is present then (as before) the Y axis label is used as the heading; if the Y axis label is blank then the corresponding legend entry is used. Similarly, if the X axis number format is dates and/or times and the X axis label is blank then DPlot makes a number-format related decision about an appropriate label: "Date", "Date/Time", or "Time".
   
• Right-clicking along the Y axis on an XY plot in previous versions allowed you to set the upper/lower limits of the Y scale, but only for the primary Y scale regardless of which side of the plot you clicked on. In this version if you are using two independent Y axes and click on the right side, you are given the option of changing the extents of the right Y axis. Note that this may not necessarily lead to the expected results: DPlot will always try to find a reasonable tick mark interval such that each Y axis has the same number of intervals.
   
• You can now set the color of minor grid lines on XY plots, independent of the major grid color.
   
• For 3D wireframe plots, if both Borders and Grid are unchecked under Draw on the "Contour Options" dialog, then element borders will be drawn. In previous versions the default was grid lines, but those lines are often too sparse to give the surface much definition. If you are plotting more than a several hundred thousand points, though, this new behavior might result in a plot that is mostly black (or whatever the border color is). In that case be sure to check Grid and uncheck Borders on the Contour Options dialog.
   
• Bug fix: DPlot did a poor job of handling CSV files with an abundance of blank entries, particularly if the last column in the first data line was blank. In many cases DPlot would get confused about which line the data started in, and/or might have reported that it could not find a pattern of data columns int the file.
   
• Bug fix: The "Label this point" feature of Edit Mode for XY plots did not pick up the label unless the label text control was given the focus (and subsequently lost the focus, either by tabbing away or clicking on another control). The was generally a problem for the second and subsequent labels added with this feature, which set the default label to the previously-specified label text (so if you were happy with that default label, there was no reason to give the text control the focus).
   
• Bug fix: The formatting buttons on the Legend dialog for XY plots did not always work on the first attempt, particularly when this dialog was opened by double-clicking on the legend.
   
• Bug fix: The LAS well log file import plugin incorrectly interpreted files containing data lines exactly 256 characters long, or comment lines longer than 256 characters. There was also a roundoff error in determining the expected number of data lines for some combinations of START, STOP, and STEP values that might have led to an erroneous error message.
   
• Bug fix: Axis labels/titles might have been drawn on the wrong side of a 3D view of 3D/4D data if negative scale factors on the X or Y axis were used.
   
• Bug fix: Date and Time number format displayed pre-1900 dates as "########", while Calendar Date format worked fine. The problem was due to DPlot originally being limited with dates in the same way that Excel is (Jan 1, 1900 through Dec 31, 2078). DPlot has for many years worked with dates from Oct 15, 1582 through Dec 31, 9999, but the text formatting for Date and Time number format was not updated to include this capability.
   

14 February, 2010
Version 2.2.7.8

• Bug fix: Some user-specified tick mark intervals did not work especially well with calendar dates, in particular tick mark intervals greater than 2 years and less than 10 resulted in a mess of early grid lines at a much smaller spacing, followed by a large gap.
   
• The divisor in the Standard error about the line calculation that is one of the outputs of the Polynomial Curve Fit command has been changed from n-1 to n-<number of unknowns>. This value now matches the answer provided by Excel's LINEST function.
   
• The trial version of DPlot now includes most of the file import and export plugin modules previously distributed only with the licensed version.
   

31 January, 2010
Version 2.2.7.7

• Removed all dependencies on DPLOTLIB.DLL functions from the Excel Add-In: all communication with DPlot is now handled entirely within the Add-In's VBA modules. This should result in fewer Excel security-related errors, and may mean that the Add-In will work with the upcoming 64-bit version of Excel 2010... stay tuned.
   
• For the Excel Add-In functions, added a hidden text notation with a description of the source data in the form "Source: [Filename]Sheet!R1C1". This might be useful for recalling the source of the data in a saved DPlot file. The note is initially placed at the upper left corner of the box surrounding a plot. No other consideration is given to the note placement, so if unhidden it might overlap other text entries (or other similar hidden notes). If you want to see this note (or move it to another location or delete it), click the Note button on the toolbar.
   
• Added $NC text shortcut, which is replaced by the 1-based curve index. This shortcut is only useful in the legend and in the Operate on X and Operate on Y commands on the Edit menu.
   
• Added the ability to specify a range in X to operate on with the Remove Random Spike menu command.
   
• Bug fix: Corrected a couple of problems with the SRTM file import plugin. 1) If "Set X:Y scale factors to give proportional ground distances" was checked (and this should have been labeled X:Y:Z scale factors) then the Z scale factor was not properly calculated, normally resulting in a greatly exaggerated Z scale in 3D views, and 2) The default tick mark interval was fouled up if the extents were greater than 20 minutes and less than or equal to 30 minutes.
   
• Bug fix: Point labels were misaligned roughly 1/2 character to the left in enhanced metafiles.
   
• Bug fix: The Integrate macro/DDE command effectively ignored any previous SelectCurve command; the curve that was integrated may (or may not) have been that specified with SelectCurve if more than 1 curve was present.