GNUPLOT Version 5.2.8 Release Notes

These release notes are for version 5.2 patchlevel 8 (5.2.8). This release contains bug-fixes and a few changes back-ported from the development version.

Please see the ChangeLog file for a complete list of changes made during the course of development from 5.0 to 5.2.

Release Notes date: 27-Nov-2019

Changes in 5.2.8

• CHANGE user-visible GPVAL_TERM_HCHAR GPVAL_TERM_VCHAR (help debug font issues)
• CHANGE placement of ylabel (compromise 5.2.7 and earlier versions) (Bug #2181)
• CHANGE make strstrt() aware of UTF8, e.g. strstrt("αβγ5", "5") returns 4
• FIX "set timestamp" from "save" must not include a justification (Bug #2178)
• FIX set cntrparam levels increment <base>, <factor> for logscale z (Bug #2183)
• FIX character pointtypes should inherit plot coloring like normal pointtypes
• FIX bad autoscaling of linked y2 axis (Bug #2186)
• FIX prevent infinite loop from unbounded interation in a non-data plot command
• FIX dimensions reported by "stats matrix every" (Bug #2189)
• FIX extent of boxplot whiskers could be off by one point (Bug #2106)
• FIX mix unbounded iteration and functions in a single plot command (Bug #2201)
• FIX reverse history search with readline=builtin (Bug #2209)
• FIX qt: suppress off-by-one ysize (Bug #1759)
• FIX cairo: suppress off-by-one ysize (Bug #1759)
• FIX gd: apply alpha to brushstroke lines (Bug #2117)
• FIX tikz: fixes to accommodate lua 5.3 and newer pgf
• FIX wxt: ExportToFile widget disabled in persist mode (Bug #2185)
• FIX qt: handling of modifier keys (ctrl alt shift) for keyboard events
• FIX wxt: handling of modifier keys (ctrl alt shift) for keyboard events
• FIX fig: dashtype "solid" was not passed through correctly to transfig
• FIX gd: incorrect line spacing of multiline label (Bug #2215)

Changes in 5.2.7

• NEW "set pm3d noclipcb" will skip drawing quadrangles with color < cbmin
• NEW pm terminal supports utf8, dashed lines, bold/italic text
• NEW imaginary component of array values is available to "using" in column 3
• NEW gnuplot --slow may help use of qt terminal with slow system font server
• CHANGE splot "with points pt 0" acts like "with dots"
• CHANGE (tikz) improved default interpretation of gnuplot arrowhead style
• CHANGE teach hidden3d to handle double-headed vectors (arrowstyle "heads")
• CHANGE "unset title" or "reset" resets all title properties to default
• CHANGE font names passed to enhanced text processing may be in quotes
• CHANGE cairo terminals accept fractional font sizes
• CHANGE "plot with table" does not output trailing field separator
• CHANGE better centering for clustered histograms
• CHANGE clear STATS_* variables before performing analysis
• CHANGE cairo, libgd, and svg terminals handle LT_NODRAW by not drawing at all
• CHANGE svg terminal clickable icons are in-line data rather than external refs
• CHANGE revise space allocated for ylabel; allow text justification for ylabel
• CHANGE reduce overhead, making it feasible to have 10^6 hypertext labels
• FIX "plot with table" unnecessarily limited string column output to 60 chars
• FIX (windows) make sure graph window is shown even if the program is "hidden"
• FIX hidden3d mode was not correctly dealing with arrowstyle backhead
• FIX sprintf in 'using' spec must not clobber numeric locale
• FIX tikz - request for polygon with 0 vertices could hang terminal
• FIX lua/tikz - do not attempt to ftruncate output being piped through stdout
• FIX tkcanvas - do not attempt to ftruncate output being piped through stdout
• FIX handle NaN values in input stream to "stats FOO matrix"
• FIX prevent extra read past the end of a datablock holding matrix data
• FIX pm - issues in box and polygon fill, (wide) lines, enhanced text, images
• FIX dropped character in piped input stream if plot window is manually closed
• FIX extraneous dots and potential segfault from splot with contour labels
• FIX boxplots - color sequence correctly starts with specified linetype
• FIX incomplete initialization led to segfault from "gnuplot -c foo.gp baz"
• FIX Allow "pm3d depthorder base" to handle 3D quadrangles with logscale z

Changes in 5.2.6

• NEW keyword "keyentry" places an entry in the key without actually plotting
• NEW "set style boxplot medianlinewidth <lw>"
• CHANGE drop non-working support for CIE/XYZ color space
• CHANGE strptime ignores content read with format a/A/w/W
• FIX various corner-case bugs and overruns found by fuzzing
• FIX revise waitforinput in x11 terminal
• FIX revise waitforinput and terminal close events in qt terminal
• FIX revise waitforinput and new window events in monothreaded wxt terminal
• FIX lua.trm compatibility with lua version 5.3
• FIX error line reporting inside an if/else bracketed clause
• FIX error in date conversion for times within a nanosecond of a year boundary

Changes in 5.2.5

• NEW "set pm3d depthorder base" sorts pm3d quadrangles by projecting to z=0
• NEW "set jitter vertical" displaces y coordinate rather than x coordinate
• NEW array size can be determined automatically from the initializer
• CHANGE place titles along x axis in plots with columnstacked histograms
• CHANGE equivalent slope constraint for mcs splines at both ends of the range
• CHANGE treat imaginary values plotted from a using spec as UNDEFINED (NaN)
• CHANGE allow "reset" between plots in a multiplot layout
• CHANGE Deprecate linux and vgagl terminals (to be removed in 5.3)
• CHANGE placement of axis and tic labels in 3D projections on to xz or yz plane
• CHANGE default to ./configure --without-wx-multithreading
• FIX parametric function plots did not work with logscale x (regression in 5.2.0-4)
• FIX polar mode "set trange" was assumed to use radians, now it tracks "set angle"
• FIX clip polar grid lines and ticks to x/y range limits
• FIX clipping of plot "with lines" when axes are nonlinear (regression from 5.0)
• FIX clipping of all elements in finanacebars/candlesticks/boxplots
• FIX clipping of 3D splot "with labels"
• FIX strange interaction of "noautoscale" with blank data lines
• FIX alignment of boxed text to center for eps/cairolatex
• FIX incompatibility of "pm3d depthorder" and rgb color taken from data column
• FIX aqua terminal font changes in enhanced text mode

Changes in 5.2.4

• NEW "call" parameters ARG1, ARG2, ... are also present as ARGV[1]...ARGV[ARGC]
• CHANGE generalize the test for missing data flag in input data
• CHANGE "set []range writeback" is now essentially always in effect
• CHANGE consistent placement of timestamp at true bottom of page
• FIX spurious evaluation of logscale coordinates as UNDEFINED
• FIX column header title assignments for histogram with errorbars
• FIX re-implement "refresh" command to use autoscale writeback/restore
• FIX font-handling bug; line-spacing of previous font still in effect
• FIX post, svg, dumb terminals: early fontsize initialization

Changes in 5.2.3

• NEW "set grid {no}vertical" adds grid lines in the xz and yz planes
• NEW "set cntrparam {firstlinetype N} {{un}sorted}"
• CHANGE drop non-working support for YIQ color space
• CHANGE expand \n characters when printing into a datablock
• CHANGE allow contour plots to opt out of hidden3d processing
• CHANGE special-case code to speed up handling of logscale axes
• CHANGE do not write GPFUN_* variables to "save" output file
• CHANGE default to density 100 for "set fs solid", 50 for "set fs transparent"
• FIX potential buffer overflow in gprintf formats containing %%
• FIX immediate response to ctrl-Z when libreadline is used for input
• FIX warning messages inside a bracketed clause could trigger early exit
• FIX tweak logscale tic range limits and minor tic generation intervals
• FIX stats FOO using 'namedcolumn' name columnhead
• FIX clipping of INRANGE->UNDEFINED line segments
• FIX use of logscale y axis in "set view map" or "set pm3d map" modes
• FIX placement of colorbox in "set view map" mode
• FIX autoscaled axis range of logscale axes in "set view map" mode
• FIX polar mode "with yerrorbars" error bars are radial, not vertical
• FIX clipping of circles whose center is offscreen to the left or bottom
• FIX canvas terminal: apply both color and alpha channel to points and lines
• FIX svg terminal: apply current color to dots
• FIX qt terminal: include "notitle" plots in accounting for toggle operations
• FIX svg terminal: point plot empty title produced spurious mousing directive
• FIX tikz terminal: failed to recognize dashtype 1

Changes in 5.2.2

• NEW set table separator {tab|comma|"char"} allows creation of csv files
• NEW hotkey for changing azimuth in 3D plots with mousing
• NEW titles for "splot .. with lines" can be placed at {beg|end} of plotted line
• NEW Rework gstrptime() to handle relative time formats tH tM tS
• NEW command 'set rgbmax <value>' controls interpretation of input RGB values
• CHANGE restore pre-5.2 interpretation of logscaled tic increment as a multiplier
• CHANGE allow mixed use of in-key plot titles and manually placed titles
• CHANGE more documentation on use of pipes to input data
• FIX autoscaling of plots with spline or bezier smoothing
• FIX autoscaling of plots with linked axes where data is plotted on x2 or y2
• FIX "with filledcurves below y=foo" mishandled the case of y value exactly = foo
• FIX [windows] repair breakage of stderr/stdout redirection to console
• FIX postscript terminal artifacts when drawing dot/dash circles
• FIX handle empty range on logscale y axis as a warning, not an error
• FIX allow set xrange [explicit_min:*] for stacked histograms

FEATURES INTRODUCED IN VERSION 5.2

• NEW plot styles and options
  • splot ... using <x>:<y>:<z>:<zlow>:<zhigh> with zerrorfill
  • "set jitter" allows creation of bee swarm plots
  • data filter "bins" sorts input into equal width bins on x
  • "with points" and "with linespoints" accept `pointtype variable`
  • hidden3d now treats 'image' and 'rgbimage' as occluding rectangles
  • "smooth fnormal" plots normalized frequency
  • allow sampling interval in range specifiers for pseudofiles '+' '++'
  • "plot with table" can handle string-valued output columns
• NEW polar mode improvements and extensions
  • "set [m]ttics" places theta tics and labels on perimeter of polar grid
  • "set rlabel" places a label above the r axis
  • "set rrange [90:0]" plots in celestial horizontal coordinates
  • "set border polar" uses border linetype for perimeter of polar plot
  • "set theta <origin> <sense>" orientation of polar coordinate theta
  • label, arrow, and object positions may be given in polar coordinates
• NEW nonlinear coordinate systems
  • "set nonlinear <axis> via f(axis) inverse g(axis)"
  • "set log" re-implemented as special case of "set nonlinear"
• NEW data type array[size]
  • any element A[i] of an array may be an integer, complex, or string value
  • operator |A| gives the cardinality of array A
• NEW commands and command options
  • "break" exits from iteration loop
  • "continue" begins next iteration immediately
  • "toggle {<plotno> | "plottitle" | all}"
  • "set pm3d lighting" specifies lighting model with specular highlighting
  • "set table OUTFILE {append}"
  • "set minussign" and "set micro" (first appeared in 5.0.5)
  • "set view azimuth <angle>" controls azimuth of the z axis in 3D plots
  • "save fit <filename>" replaces deprecated command "update"
  • "set style textbox" supports fillcolor and bordercolor
• NEW terminals and terminal options
  • terminal domterm (supports in-line SVG in DomTerm terminal emulator)
  • terminal sixelgd (sixel terminal graphics using gdlib)
  • svg 'standalone' embeds images rather than including by reference
  • windows terminal supports saving graph as bitmap
  • windows graph windows can be docked to the wgnuplot text window
  • wxt supports saving graph as EMF on Windows
  • wxt supports printing on Windows
  • dumb supports ANSI colors and filled polygons
• NEW gnuplot on Windows
  • converts Unicode (BMP) input to current `set encoding`, including UTF-8
  • the program is system DPI aware

CHANGES FROM PREVIOUS VERSIONS

Backward compatibility

Gnuplot development assigns very high priority to backward compatibility with earlier versions. However changes introduced in version 5 can affect the operation of some version 4 scripts. Please see section "Differences from Version 4" in the User Manual.

Deprecated commands

The "update" command is still recognized in version 5.2 but is deprecated and will be removed in the next version. Use "save fit" instead.

Scope of variables

The control variable of an iteration loop is strictly limited in scope to the iteration it controls. The value of any previous variable with that name is restored after iteration. The same is true for an iteration associated with a sampling range in a plot or splot command.

Other minor changes

• Auto-placement of axis labels, title, and other text items on the page has changed slightly since version 5.0
• point style associated with "plot with labels" is shown in the key
• text properties for the key title are separate from the key entries
• order of margins in `set margins <left>, <right>, <bottom>, <top>`
• Store and reuse x,y dimensions at the time image data is read in
• Some STATS_foo variables are of type integer rather than real (complex)
• ^R starts a backward search when using the built-in readline
• Only update axis->data_min/max if the point being stored is INRANGE
• auto-generation of minitics on logscale axis has changed
• revised printing dialogs on Windows
• preserve whitespace following opening { in enhanced text strings
• windows terminal provides better oversampling
• New default "set key fixed" prevents 3D key box from rotating with plot
• windows terminal also uses GDI+ for printing and copy-to-clipboard
• raxis/polar grid can coexist with Cartesian axes
• evaluation of norm(x) or x**y returns 0 on floating underflow
• support for space-in-x11-raises-KDE3-konsole is now a configure option
• don't use loadpath to choose output directory for "save"
• GNUTERM may contain terminal options in addition to bare terminal name
• RGB color components of "with rgbimage" are always in the range [0:255] (i.e. not affected by "set cbrange")

ONLINE DEMO PLOTS

Demo plots illustrating new and old features are online at http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo_5.2/

KNOWN ISSUES

• If you configure in the wxt terminal on linux you may need to manually set the environmental variable TERMLIBS during configuration:
  • TERMLIBS="-lX11" ./configure
• Some people have reported runtime problems when the wxt terminal uses wxgtk library versions 3.0.x. If you have the option of linking against wxgtk version 2.8 instead, this may be a better choice.
• Compilation on Solaris may require adding -liconv to LIB_FLAGS Building the plugin demo with a SunPro Compiler requires changing the build flags as shown in comments in ./demo/plugin/Makefile.am
• Font initialization on OSX and Windows can be very slow, causing the qt terminal to issue warning or error messages for the first plot command. If this causes actual program failure, try "gnuplot --slow".
• The antialiasing option produces artifacts in some versions of Qt. In particular point types 1 and 2 appear unbalanced due to shading.
• You can configure support for both wxt and qt into the same gnuplot executable, but only one of these can be used in any given gnuplot session.
• The gnuplot build system is not very good at figuring out where to find or install LaTeX-related files. This can affect use of the lua/tikz and ConTeXt terminals.
• Using mouse clicks to toggle individual plots on/off does not always work correctly for multiplots if the key box is opaque. Toggling plots drawn in hidden3d mode (hidden line removal) does not work.
• Mouse double-click to export terminal coordinates to the X11 clipboard no longer works reliably, and may be deprecated in the future.

NOTES TO 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.

The TeX tutorial produced by --with-tutorial is horribly out of date.

./configure --enable-backwards-compatibility will allow use of some deprecated syntax from old gnuplot versions. However the result of using these deprecated commands may not match the old version output.

Configuration options for interactive use

The 5.2 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
   • wxt for 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

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.

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

build it:
      cd gnuplot-5.2.8 ; ./configure ; make
test it:
      make check
install it:
      make install

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/

There is also an gnuplot discussion forum on usenet group

comp.graphics.apps.gnuplot

Development

Gnuplot development is ongoing. The development branch contains preliminary implementations of new features. The current development version is 5.3 (odd minor number) and will eventually be released as version 5.4 (even minor number). Bugfixes to version 5.2 will appear in patchlevel releases 5.2.1, 5.2.2, etc., approximately twice a year or as needed to correct a serious problem.

Note: development has moved from cvs to git.