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

April 24, 2006
Version 2.0.5.1

  • Bug fix: One more bug associated with the recent change allowing blank entries in CSV files has been found and fixed. In versions 2.0.4.7 - 2.0.5.0 if you opened a file containing more data rows than the current maximum number of points, DPlot might have crashed and/or produced a nonsense plot.
     

April 22, 2006
Version 2.0.5.0

  • Changed the behavior of the Excel Add-In a bit. When appending a new curve to an existing plot using the "XYXY", "XYYY", or "X,Y,Label" commands, if the currently existing document has only one curve and that curve has no legend, then the Y axis label of that document is used as the legend of that existing curve, and the Y axis label is deleted.
     
  • Another Excel Add-In change: In previous versions the XYYY command did not work correctly if a selection included blank columns. To make this work correctly you were required to make multiple selections with the Ctrl key. This version checks for and ignores blank columns.
     
  • DPlot does a better job of trimming white space when "None" is used as the number format for the X or Y axes on an XY plot. Coupled with the printer margin bug fix mentioned below, this change makes the creation of graph paper occupying most of the allowable area of a page much easier. For examples see the Graph Paper page.
     
  • DPlot now takes into account the position of text labels added with Text>X,Y Labels when finding the extents of a graph. In previous versions it was possible to position a label off the screen or printed page.
     
  • Y=f(X) and similar functions as well as text boxes that accept an equation as input will now accept as arguments to the equation the text shortcuts (e.g. $YMAX, $MEAN, etc.) previously used only in title lines, axis labels, and other text entries. For example the equation "Y=X+$MEAN(3)" generates a curve with Y values equal to X plus the average amplitude of the third curve.
     
  • The results of simple equations may now be included in title lines, axis labels, etc. Equations should be prefaced by "$=" and surrounded by parentheses. For example, "The square root of 5 is $=(sqrt(5))" will be replaced with "The square root of 5 is 2.23607". Coupled with the above change, you can include other text shortcuts in these equations, as in "Relative Standard Deviation=$=(100*$STDEV(1)/$MEAN(1))".
     
  • "Check for Updates" (licensed version only) is improved. In previous versions you could only download a given update once. This worked fine in most cases, but became a problem if, for whatever reason, you overwrote the current version with an older one and then attempted to use "Check for Updates" to restore the current release.
     
  • Bug fix: One more problem associated with the recent change of allowing blank entries in multiple columns of numbers (whether in a file or pasted from the Clipboard). If the columns were tab- or comma-separated but contained extra spaces, DPlot became confused about the number of columns.
     
  • Bug fix: With many printer drivers DPlot erroneously added the specified print margins to the minimum margins for the printer. For normal plots this usually made little difference, but for blank graph paper made it very difficult to create paper that took up most or all of the allowable space on a page.
     
  • Bug fix: If you right-clicked on a curve and selected the Color command but then clicked outside the color control to close the control, the control was hidden rather than closed, and still trapped all mouse clicks and arrow keys. Mouse clicks within the associated document window were then ignored.
     
  • Bug fix: Distance from command needlessly updated every time an entry in a text box was changed in any way, rather than when a text box lost the focus. This made it impossible to correctly enter a date in the form m/d/yy.
     
  • Bug fix: Function parser crashed DPlot if an operator (+,-,*,/,^) was not followed by an operand.
     

April 7, 2006
Version 2.0.4.7

  • Added a bar chart command to the Excel Add-In which accepts non-numeric labels for the X axis.
     
  • Added C# and FreeBASIC demo programs to the DPLOTLIB distribution. Improved method of finding DPLOTLIB.DLL when debugging your program within the Visual Basic or VB.NET (and now C#) development environments. DPLOTLIB.DLL and the associated example programs are included in the DPlot Jr setup and are also available as a separate download.
     
  • Sped up 3D views of surface plots of random 3D points by an order of magnitude or more for a large number of points. Previous versions used a scanline z-buffer algorithm that minimized memory usage but had the unfortunate feature of looping through the same data many times. This version uses a z-buffer covering the entire screen (or other output device). The table below shows comparisons between previous versions and the new drawing method. Your results will of course vary, depending on processor speed and RAM. But the relationship should be consistent on all systems.

    Drawing time in milliseconds
    Number
    of points    		Version
    2.4.0.1    		Version
    2.4.0.7
    1,000656547
    10,0002276708
    50,00084171062
    100,000157391515
    500,000757664276

     
  • For XY plots, data columns imported either by pasting from the Clipboard or read from a file of one or more columns of numbers may now include blank entries. This includes blank spreadsheet cells when pasting from Excel, for example. Blank entries are ignored; if the n'th row for a column is blank then the associated curve will connect the (n-1)th and (n+1)th row values. For this feature to work as expected, columns must be tab-separated or comma-separated. (Columns copied in Excel are normally tab-separated).
     
  • For XY plots, added an option on the Point Labels dialog to label all points in all curves. Modified the TextPointLabel macro/DDE command to include this capability.
     
  • For 2D plots added the ability to draw the Y axis label(s) horizontally. To use this feature double-click on the Y axis label, or right-click and select "Horizontal". Added corresponding YAxisHorizontal macro/DDE command.
     
  • Revised image export plugins to accept an optional resolution setting. Originally the resolution field was ignored and left at 0. This led to complaints that DPlot would not produce "high resolution" image files for publication, which of course was not correct. Subsequent versions arbitrarily set the resolution field to 800 dpi, which satisfied those users but caused a problem when importing DPlot-produced images into, among other programs, Microsoft Word: the bitmap was initially scaled to the pixel dimensions divided by the resolution: small, in other words. Please note that the resolution setting has absolutely no effect on the content of the image, other than the header field within the file. It is included for the benefit of those users who require this setting. The actual resolution of the image is determined by the program that displays and/or prints the image.
     
  • Added ability to draw markers at data point locations for 3D data. Currently the marker is limited to a 3x3 black box. To draw markers at data points check the "Data points" box on the Contour Options dialog. Programmatically this feature can be turned on with [SymbolType(1,1)], where the symbol type (the 2nd argument) is 0 to turn markers off, or any non-zero number to turn markers on.
     
  • Added the ability to hide text notes, using either the right-click dropdown menu or Text>Add/Edit Note.
     
  • Error bars can now be drawn horizontally. This option is ignored for bar charts.
     
  • Bar chart bars are now centered within their interval; in previous versions the bars were left justified for width settings less than 100%.
     
  • "Draw sides" for 3D views of random 3D data now works much better than in all previous versions. Previous versions had problems with roundoff errors resulting in portions of edges being overwritten by other edge planes.
     
  • Added a file import plugin (licensed version only) for LeCroy WavePro digital oscilloscopes.
     
  • Bug fix: Recent change allowing tick marks on the outside edges of the graph did not work with exported metafiles: tick marks were clipped.
     
  • Bug fix: It was possible to leave a popup tooltip showing graph coordinates active when switching to another application. This might have resulted in that popup window becoming semi-permanent when switching back to DPlot if another plot was created outside of DPlot, e.g. by the Excel Add-In.
     
  • Bug fix: List Peaks in Box caused DPlot to crash if you simply clicked and released the mouse, rather than clicking and dragging.
     
  • Bug fix: The CTRL+arrow key pan feature for zoomed plots did not work as expected if "Specify number" for the tick mark intervals was selected.
     
  • Bug fix: The Histogram command used a different standard deviation calculation (1/N) than the $STDEV shortcut, List Peaks command, etc. (1/(N-1)). While valid, the histogram calculation has been changed to 1/(N-1) to be consistent.
     

March 4, 2006
Version 2.0.4.1

  • Excel Add-In:
    • Added X,Y,Label command. This creates a single curve in an XY plot and uses entries from the Labels column as point labels. Label column may contain blank entries.
    • XYZSurface command will now interpret a 4th column (if selected) as point labels.
    • Moved Append to existing document menu command to new Options dialog box, which also contains settings for new label features. All settings are stored to the registry and are persistent.
    • Hidden rows are now ignored.

  • Removed, for all practical purposes, the limitation on the number of point labels in a plot. Previous versions were limited to 100 labels. This version is limited to about 15 million labels (2Gb divided by, currently, 140 bytes per label).
     
  • Improved the performance of mouse-activated point labels. In previous versions if the labels were closely-spaced, moving the mouse from point-to-point resulted in screen flashing and remnants of old labels left beneath the new label.
     
  • If using Calendar date number format (as opposed to Date and Time) then in previous versions DPlot would only show the date in dialog box entries for several different commands (for example a note's anchor point), when it might have been more appropriate to show both the date and time. As a result the fractional part of these numbers would be truncated if you simply opened a dialog box and clicked OK. In this version, if the fractional part of a date is 1 second or greater, DPlot will show both the date and time for Calendar date format in dialog boxes.
     
  • Reworked Edit>Combine Curves. Previous versions allowed you to combine the data from one (and only one) curve with that of another curve, and the original curve was deleted. This version allows you to combine 2 or more curves and has an option to preserve the original curves. Modified the CombineCurves macro/DDE command to include a "keep" parameter.
     
  • Coefficients presented in the results of Polynomial Curve Fit are now shown with more significant figures. And the default number of points to generate in the fitted curve is now the maximum of 1000 and the number of points in the input. In previous versions the default was the number of points in the input, which confused many users when they didn't get a smooth curve as a result.
     
  • The feature of showing coordinates in a popup window when hovering the mouse over a data point for 1/2 second is now an option under Options>General. In previous versions this feature was not optional and might have been an annoyance.
     
  • Added Subtract Mean command to the Edit menu for XY plots. This command subtracts the average Y value from all Y values in one or more curves. Added corresponding EditSubtractMean macro/DDE command.
     
  • Added new tick mark features to 1D plots (box-and-whisker plots, dot graphs). See Options>Tick Marks.
     
  • Lighting of 3D surfaces: In previous versions DPlot polled the printer device driver to find the color resolution of the device, and ignored lighting settings if the bits/pixel value returned was 8 or less (256 colors). However, virtual drivers for PDF files return erroneous information. So even though the device driver was perfectly capable of handling a 24-bit picture, DPlot would draw an unlit 3D surface. In this version DPlot pays attention to the bits/pixel setting only for display monitors and assumes that all other output devices can handle a 24-bit picture correctly.
     
  • Bug fix: Last version's fix to eliminate crashes due to integer overflows (related to the tick mark interval being much smaller than the numbers on the axis, usually only a problem with calendar dates) re-introduced a roundoff error on specified extents. You might, for example, specify a lower limit of 2.4 and a tick mark interval of 0.2, but DPlot would reset the lower limit to 2.2.
     
  • Bug fix: Last version's change of allowing tick marks on the outside edge of the plot resulted in a bug if Options>Grid Lines or Box>Axes Only was selected. A couple of parameters for this axis type were not initialized correctly so that the numbers along the Y axis were not drawn and tick marks were not drawn until you switched to another axis type and back again.
     

February 26, 2006
Version 2.0.4.0

  • DPlot_Start function will now check version numbers of dplotjr.exe and dplot.exe and use DPlot Jr if it meets the minimum version requirement but the full version does not. The minimum version is either the default value set within the DLL (currently 2.0.3.3) or a more recent version that you can specify with the new DPlot_MinVersion function. All previous versions of DPlot_Start always used the full version of DPlot if it could be found, unless DPlot Jr was already running and the full version was not.
     
  • Added Tick Marks command to the Options menu to control the placement (inside, outside, or both) and size of tick marks. Previous versions always drew tick marks to the inside of the graph and used a fixed size of 1/2 the height of the font used for numbers and 1/4 of that height for minor tick marks. Added corresponding TickMarks macro/DDE command.
     
  • For XY plots, when using Edit>Edit Data you may now use the mouse to edit existing points or add new points. Also, changes to the data are now automatically reflected in the graph. Taken together, these two new features enable you to "draw" a plot with your mouse. One consequence of this change is that you cannot Cancel the operation unless Undo is enabled. "Snap mouse" option rounds mouse-picked values to "nice" numbers, based on the current tick mark interval. Also added a Sort button, which sorts the data in ascending X order.
     
  • Added "Font..." menu item to the right-click menu for numbers along the coordinate axes.
     
  • Added "X axis increases left-to-right" option for Grain Size Distribution plots.
     
  • File>Append works more consistently with DPlot files. You can now append multiple DPlot files to an existing plot. Settings within the appended plot which affect the entire plot (scaling, extents, tick mark intervals, title lines and axis labels, etc.) are ignored.
     
  • Added NORMRAND function for Y=f(X) and other commands that generate data from an equation. NORMRAND returns a normally-distributed random number from a distribution with a specified mean and standard deviation.
     
  • Better error reporting on image export options (BMP, GIF, etc.). Previous versions simply failed when an error was encountered, with no error message.
     
  • When panning a zoomed plot, pressing the Ctrl key in combination with the arrow keys now pans the plot by 10% of the normal pan distance. (By default, the pan distance is one half of the plot extents. This fraction can be reset with a SetPanFraction macro command.)
     
  • If the crosshair cursor is used, that cursor is now used during a Distance Between Points command. In previous versions the cursor reverted to the default arrow when any dialog box was opened.
     
  • Point labels for invisible curves are not drawn.
     
  • The Colors dialog for XY plots now includes curve legends in the label rather than the generic Curve 1, Curve2, etc.
     
  • Improved the new N1.85 scaling option a bit. Previous version did not allow X values equal to 0. This was simply to avoid math errors and not a physical limitation of the scale.
     
  • Changed behavior when opening files from Explorer, the command line, or a FileOpen DDE command. In previous versions a '+' symbol was always interpreted as a delineator between filenames, so that you could specify multiple files to open on the command line. This is a remnant from DOS 8.3 filenames, when a '+' was not a legal filename character. The problem with this operation is that filenames containing a '+' character could not be opened from Explorer or any of the previously-mentioned methods. In this version, to use a '+' symbol to specify multiple files all filenames must have an extension. Likewise, you cannot open a file from Explorer if the filename contains a '.' character preceding any '+' character.
     
  • Bug fix: Fairly recent addition of N1.85 scaling resulted in changes in the X axis scaling that broke rotated 1D plots (box-and-whisker plots or dot graphs).
     
  • Bug fix: If opening a file from Explorer with "Open" or "Open with", if DPlot was already open and a document was open, then the new document would inherit inappropriate properties of the first document. In most cases this was merely an annoyance, in other cases it might have resulted in a crash.
     
  • Bug fix: DPlot failed to read data columns with values greater than the maximum magnitude of a single-precision floating point number about (3.4E+38) either from multiple-column text files or text columns on the Clipboard.
     
  • Bug fix: If "Always auto-adjust scale factors on 3D plots" was checked, scale factors saved to DPlot files were ignored.
     
  • Bug fix: Image formats saved by DPlot (BMP, GIF, etc., plus bitmaps copied to the clipboard) sometimes included an extra black line along the bottom and/or right sides of the image.
     
  • Bug fix: File>Append presented a bogus error message if appending a DPlot file that contained user-specified tick mark intervals.
     
  • Bug fix: With new N1.85 scale, a dependent second X axis (for example, used for different units) was scaled incorrectly.
     
  • Bug fix: For XY plots with gridlines across the plot and a second X axis related to the primary X axis by an equation, the labels for the second axis were prone to overlap for many unit conversions.
     
  • Bug fix: It was possible to cause DPlot to crash if you attempted to plot a curve on a log Y scale when the curve had only 2 points and one of those points had Y=0.
     
  • Bug fix: DPlot crashed due to an integer overflow if you selected a tick mark interval smaller than either extent divided by about 2 billion (more precisely, 0x7FFFFFFF). This would commonly be a problem when working with calendar dates and a tick mark interval of 1 second or smaller.
     
  • Bug fix: The default extents on XY plots often cut off portions of the data, if the magnitude of the X or Y values was much larger than the default tick mark interval
     
  • Bug fix: Edit>Edit Data did not use a sufficient number of significant figures in some cases.
     
  • Bug fix: Edit>Copy Data Values did not use a sufficient number of significant figures for XY plots with date/time groups on the X axis.
     

February 11, 2006
Version 2.0.3.3

  • Added N1.85 Hydraulic graph scaling. The X axis is proportional to X raised to the 1.85 power; Y axis is linear.
     
  • Added Engineer number format. This is identical to Powers of 10, with the exception that exponents will always be multiples of 3.
     
  • Added USDA Soil Classification option for triangle plots.
     
  • Popup tooltip-like windows showing coordinates that were previously only available for XY plots are now shown in 2D views of 3D data.
     
  • Use 1000 separator is now specific to each axis.
     
  • Bug fix: Previous versions did not save enough significant figures to correctly store date/time groups for note locations and point label locations. Several dialogs did not allow input of dates and/or times when those formats would have been appropriate. And other dialogs that did allow input of date/time groups used text boxes and/or static text controls that were too small to show the entire entry.
     
  • Bug fix: Corrected a bug with saving 'SymbolCycleColors' keyword to DPlot files.
     
  • Bug fix: Corrected a bug in the number formatting routine that might have caused a crash if you either a) used any $ text shortcuts (e.g. $YMAX) or b) used the "Find Intersections" menu command.
     

January 27, 2006
Version 2.0.2.7

  • Added better support for PlotMetrics and PlotMetricsEx "request" items (retrieved with a call to DPlot_Request in DPLOTLIB.DLL.
     
  • You can now right-click on the numbers along any axis of an XY plot to set the plot extents.
     
  • Improved interpretation of dates and times entered in text boxes of various dialogs. In previous versions, dates or times were only accepted as input if the corresponding axis used date or time formatting. This was a minor problem if, for example, you were creating a plot from scratch and attempting to enter dates using the Edit Data input. In this release dates and/or times may be entered regardless of whether the corresponding number format is used. DPlot also does a slightly better job of determining the order of the month, day, and year in a date input.
     
  • Extents and tick mark selection dialog for 3D plots now mimics the XY plot version: Extents can be specified with dates and simple equations; tick marks for date scales can be specified in days, months, years, etc.
     
  • Improved default tick mark selection for 3D plots.
     
  • Added an option for tripartite plots to draw acceleration and displacement grid lines for 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 times a power of 10.
     
  • Bug fix: Several plot parameters were incorrectly initialized during a macro ForFilesIn loop. In particular the number of symbols used in each legend entry was set to 0 rather than the default 2 and the number of significant figures displayed was set to 0 (meaning values along each axis were rounded to integers). This problem existed only in ForFilesIn loops in which the documents were opened and closed within the loop, for example in a loop to save all DPlot files as images.
     
  • Bug fix: Bitmaps created when saving image files (JPEG, PNG, etc.) were not freed under some circumstances. This might have led to a failure to save subsequent image files, particularly when attempted in a ForFilesIn macro loop.
     
  • Bug fix: Change in previous version allowing British sieve sizes on a Grain Size Distribution plot contained a bug which might have caused DPlot to crash under some circumstances.
     
  • When opening a 3-column text file as a surface plot, if the triangulation on this data failed (such that a MessageBox with "All points are collinear." was displayed), DPlot failed to clean up all of the data structures used for a surface plot. This bug might have then led to a crash when subsequently opening another file.
     
  • Bug fix: New Excel Add-In feature, "Append to active document", erroneously created an extra curve with 0 points on XY plots.
     
  • Bug fix: Function parser included in the last several releases neglected to include acosh, asinh, and atanh functions.
     
  • Bug fix: Lecroy WavePro file import filter did not properly handle 1-byte data records. These records were assumed to be unsigned bytes (0 to 255) rather than the correct signed bytes (-128 to 127).
     

December 17, 2005
Version 2.0.2.2 addendum

  • A mistake in the Excel AddIn distributed with version 2.0.2.2 will cause the AddIn installation to fail for many non-English speaking users. The problem has been fixed in all distributions. If this problem affects you and you have already downloaded version 2.0.2.2, you can get a fixed AddIn installation in this much smaller (123Kb) file: addinstall.exe
     

December 16, 2005
Version 2.0.2.2

  • Added "Append to active document" option to Excel Add-In menu. If checked, the XYXY, XYYY, OneCurvePerRow, XYZScatter, and OneD functions will generate a new data set in the currently active DPlot document rather than opening a new document if the active document is of the expected type (XY plot, 3D scatter, etc.). It is not necessary for that document to have been created by the Add-In. Likewise, the XYZSurface command will append the selected data to an existing surface plot. This option is ignored for the ZGrid Add-In command. This new functionality requires this update of DPlot or DPlot Jr; it will not work correctly with previous versions.
     
  • Added a Help file and Help menu command for the Excel Add-In.
     
  • Legend and note location is handled slightly differently in this version than in all previous versions. In previous versions the top left corner of the imaginery rectangle surrounding the text of the object was the reference point for that object's location. If the legend or note is framed, that frame includes a 1 character width and 1/2 character height whitespace border. The disadvantage to the previous reference point was that when printing to large format paper, the discrete font sizes used on your display would result in (usually) small roundoff errors that made it impossible to place the frame surrounding the legend or note in exactly the same location on the display and printed output. In this version the frame surrounding the object is used rather than the imaginery rectangle enclosing the text. So, for example, if the legend reference point is the top left corner (also new, see below) and the location is specified as (0.5, 0.5), then the top left corner of the frame surrounding the legend will be in the exact center of the plot on all output devices. Also added inputs for the legend location on the Legend dialog box; previous versions were limited to dragging the legend with the mouse. Please note that this change will result in a slight shift of the legend and all text notes in previously saved DPlot files.
     
  • Legend and text notations may now be aligned to the left, center, or right horizontally and top, middle, or bottom vertically. In previous versions the top left corner was always used. Modified LegendParams macro/DDE command to take into account this new capability.
     
  • Note placement may now be tied to data space, rather than a fixed location relative to the plot. Added TextNoteEx macro/DDE command to handle this new capability as well as the alignment mentioned above.
     
  • Notes may now be up to 4095 characters long. Previous versions were limited to 511 characters.
     
  • Added color selection to right-click dropdown menu for curves in XY plots.
     
  • 3D scatter plots may now have line segments between data points. Added ScatterPlotLines macro/DDE command.
     
  • DPlot now does a better job of preserving user-selected file extensions for most file types.
     
  • You may notice a substantial improvement in the time it takes DPlot to shut down with this version. Previous versions did a bit of unnecessary housecleaning in dplot.ini.
     
  • Info>Interpolate now allows you to input a date value for X if one of the calendar date number formats is used for the X axis.
     
  • View>Reorder Curves now includes "curves" which serve only as the source of error amplitudes for error bars. In previous versions these curves were not included, which made it very hard to correctly associate colors with curves.
     
  • If you create a curve in an empty document using an equation (Y=f(X), etc.) and check "degrees", the polar plot "degrees" option is now automatically turned on (that is, input angular values are assumed to be in degrees rather than radians). Likewise if "radians" is checked when creating a curve, the "radians" polar option is turned on.
     
  • Added an option to outline solid filled symbols on XY plots in black. In previous versions all symbols on XY plots were drawn with a single color.
     
  • Added pressure unit selection to Data Processing dialog (psi, megapascals, and kilopascals). Previous versions were limited to psi.
     
  • You can press the Escape key to cancel a plot pan (normally done by dragging the mouse).
     
  • Bug fix: On a zoomed plot if you clicked on a note or the legend, then the pan arrow appeared once you moved the mouse, even though the plot would not be panned.
     
  • Bug fix: The pan feature for zoomed XY plots erroneously panned the plot a small distance if you simply clicked within the plot. This version does not pan the plot unless you drag the mouse by 10 or more pixels before releasing.
     
  • Bug fix: Color selections saved to a DPlot file were incorrectly assigned if the file was opened with File>Append (appended to an existing plot).
     
  • Bug fix: Axis labels and legends with embedded carriage return/line feed sequences or line feeds only were handled improperly in DPlot. You might end up with these embedded characters if, for example, you use Alt+Enter in a column heading in Microsoft Excel to force a line break in a label. When saved to a DPlot file these embedded characters were preserved, which in some circumstances caused DPlot to crash when reading that saved file. In this release DPlot 1) prevents this crash with previously saved files, 2) when pasting data from the clipboard or handling data passed by DPLOTLIB.DLL (from the Excel Add-In, for example), replaces these characters with the literal characters \n (which DPlot recognizes as a line break) in title lines and axis labels, or a space in legend entries, and 3) performs the same check before saving a file, for cases that might have been missed by #2.
     
  • Bug fix: If bitmap dimensions specified with Edit>Copy>Dimensions or any of the image export plugins was set to a very small non-zero value, then DPlot would waste a lot of time trying to find a combination of font sizes and plot size that would fit within the specified rectangle, taking minutes to produce a bitmap instead of the normal second or so. In this version if either the width or height values are less than 100 pixels, DPlot behaves as if those values were set to 0: the document window dimensions will be used.
     
  • Bug fix: Relatively new feature of being able to select multiple curves in the Symbol/Line Styles dialog had a bug that could under some circumstances cause DPlot to crash.
     
  • Bug fix: Text notations were sometimes written improperly to DPlot files, such that the file could not be reopened by DPlot. If this happens with a previously saved DPlot file for you, you can fix the problem by opening the file in Notepad and searching for 'NoteV2'. The following line should contain 4 numbers separated by one or more spaces or by a single comma. Normally this will be a problem when the first number uses scientific notation and the 2nd number is negative. For example, ' 0.1584E-01-0.3300E-01' should be ' 0.1584E-01 -0.3300E-01'.
     
  • Bug fix: XY label selections (created with Text>XY Labels)were inappropriately passed on to new XY plot documents, rather than being cleared out.
     
  • Bug fix: The Delete button on the Reference Lines dialog deleted the incorrect reference line if more than one line existed.
     

November 2, 2005
Version 2.0.1.6

  • DPlot now stores the last 20 equations used by Y=f(X), Y=f(X,Y1,Y2,...), Z=f(X,Y), and Operate on |X,Y,Z|. Previously used equations are available from a dropdown list.
     
  • If a path is not specified in the GetPreferences macro/DDE command, the default preferences folder is assumed (c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\DPlot\Preferences on Windows 2000 and XP). If a filename extension is not included, ".set" is appended.
     
  • Bug fix: There were a few remaining problems with false positives for mouse clicks associated with the line style/symbol style right-click menu and with edit mode when clicking on nearly vertical portions of curves consisting of densely-spaced points.
     
  • Bug fix: Ambient light fraction for 3D lighting was ignored on Contour Options dialog.
     

October 31, 2005
Version 2.0.1.5

  • Added light source shading for 3D views of 3D surfaces.
     
  • DPlot will now accept dates in text files or from text on the clipboard with months spelled out or abbreviated. For example 26-Oct-05 or 26-October-05 are acceptable, as well as variations on month, day, year order and dashes vs. slashes as separators. Previous versions were limited to numeric entries for months, and only m/d/yy, m/d/yyyy, or yyyy/m/d (or m-d-yy, etc.) were accepted. As in version 2.0.1.4, if the year is not the last value, then it must be 4 digits. See the new FAQ entry on stock market records for a nifty usage of this feature.
     
  • Amended last update's new Copy feature on the Scanning Points dialog to allow you to specify whether X, Y, or both X and Y are copied to the clipboard.
     
  • By popular demand, amended right-click menu behavior. If you right-click outside the extents of an XY plot, the Edit menu will now be shown. Previously this operation showed bits and pieces of the Options menu. If you right-click numbers along the axes, you'll get Extents/Tick Marks/Size and Multiple Axes as well as number formatting options.
     
  • DPlot does a better job handling user-specified extents and intermediate tick/grid intervals on calendar scales.
     
  • Bug fix: Drag-and-drop operations and Explorer "Open With" commands failed for CSV files if lines were terminated with line feeds only, rather than the normal PC-world carriage return/line feed pairs.
     
  • Bug fix: Mouse hit tests for right-click line/symbol style menu and Edit mode left clicks often returned false positives when clicking near vertical portions of curves.
     
  • Excel Add-In does a better job of determining when columns use some form of date formatting and turns on Calendar Date number format in DPlot when found.
     

October 26, 2005
Version 2.0.1.4

  • Several new functions have been added to the function parser used by Y=f(X) and similar commands:
    • ACOSH, ASINH, ATANH - Inverse hyperbolic cosine, sine, and tangent, respectively.
    • BESSELJ returns the Bessel function of the first kind for the specified X value and order.
    • BESSELY returns the Bessel function of the second kind for the specified X value and order.
    • DATE returns the Excel 1900 date system serial number that represents the input year, month, and day. (This function has been in place for several versions but has been improved such that it accepts variable arguments.)
    • DAY, MONTH, and YEAR return the day of the month (1-31), month (1-12), and year of the input Excel serial number.
    • MOD - Remainder after division.
    • NORMDIST returns the normal distribution for a given mean and standard deviation
    • RANDBETWEEN returns a random number between specified limits.
    • SIGN returns -1 if the argument is less than 0, 0 if the argument is equal to 0, and 1 if the argument is greater than 0.
    • WEEKDAY returns the day of the week (1=Sunday, 7=Saturday) for the input Excel serial number.
    • WEEKNUM returns the week number within a year for the input Excel serial number.

     
  • For bitmaps copied to the clipboard with the width or height set to 0 (via Edit>Copy>Dimensions) or saved image files (BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, TIF) with the width or height set to 0, DPlot uses the current document window dimensions as in previous versions, but in this version eliminates the white space around the plot, leaving no more than a 10 pixel border.
     
  • You can now set the dimensions used for copied metafiles (Edit>Copy>Dimensions) to 0. If either the width or the height is set to 0, then subsequent metafiles will be approximately the size of a maximized document window, limited to 327.67 millimeters (about 12.9 inches). This change will result in metafiles having the same aspect ratio seen on the screen for maximized documents. For best results with copied metafiles the preferred approach remains the same: Use Options>Extents/Tick Marks/Size and check the Specify size box.
     
  • The capabilities of the X Labels command for XY plots has been expanded significantly. You may now have up to 100 labels. Labels can be placed on the X or Y axis on any side of the plot, and you can specify an offset from the numbers normally appearing along that axis so that labels and numbers don't overlap. Added XYLabel macro/DDE command. XLabel command is still supported but is obsolete.
     
  • DPlot will now correctly interpret dates from text files in the form yyyy/m/d in addition to the default m/d/yyyy. This change requires 4 digit years for the form yyyy/m/d, while trailing years may be either 2 or 4 digits.
     
  • DPlot will now correctly interpret columns of percentages in both clipboard data and text files. Previous versions balked at the % sign.
     
  • The "Files of type" selection on the Open dialog for each file type is now preserved.
     
  • Added an option to use British standard sieve sizes rather than U.S. standards on a grain size distribution plot.
     
  • Added a Copy button to the Scanning Points dialog for XY plots. If clicked, the currently selected data point's X and Y values are copied to the clipboard using the default number format.
     
  • If "None" was used as the number format for the X, Y, or Z axes, then in previous versions those numbers were not displayed in several dialog boxes, on the status bar when moving the mouse, nor when using $X, $Y, or $Z shortcuts in point labels. In this release the default number format will be used in place of "None".
     
  • The MoveCurves macro/DDE command will now accept a document index in place of the destination document caption. So [MoveCurves(1,-1,0)] copies all curves to document #1.
     
  • The default tick mark interval (neither "Specify number" or "Specify interval" has been selected) is now 1, 2, 2.5, or 5 times a power of 10 for the default number format. If "Specify number" is selected then, as in previous versions, the tick mark interval will be 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 8 times a power of 10.
     
  • Added $FILETITLE placeholder for titles, legend, axis labels, etc. If used, it is replaced by the text appearing in the title bar of the document, normally the document filename if it has been saved.
     
  • Minor tick marks or grid lines are now supported for probability scales.
     
  • Bug fix: The use of a bold font in text notations or the legend sometimes resulted in the frame around that text being undersized when rendering the plot to an enhanced metafile. This problem was due to an inconsistency in the size of bold fonts between the display and a rendered metafile.
     
  • Bug fix: On some versions of Windows character placement in text entries using subscript or superscript attributes was incorrect in enhanced metafiles. In particular, the text following a subscript was shifted too high (too low in the case of superscripts).
     
  • Bug fix: It was possible to close a document without destroying the popup window displaying a data point's coordinates (created by hovering the mouse over a point). It was then not possible to remove that popup window without closing DPlot.
     
  • Bug fix: Popup window displayed on XY plots when you hover the mouse over a data point was always drawn to the upper right, possibly off-screen.
     
  • Bug fix: Similarly, the default location for point labels might have been outside the plot in previous versions.
     
  • Bug fix: DPlot had problems reading heading lines from text files if the line contained a long string of "*" symbols. These entries were erroneously interpreted as NaN's (Not-a-Number), which led to subsequent goofy behavior.
     
  • Bug fix: For exported bitmap images, if the height or width was set to 0 (meaning use the display window dimensions) and the document window was not maximized, the sizes of several text entries were incorrect unless you used the "Specify plot size" option under Options>Extents/Tick Marks/Size.
     
  • Bug fix: Grid lines in standard metafiles were usually drawn in black, regardless of the specified color. This problem did not exist for enhanced metafiles.
     
  • Bug fix: Point labels on triangle plots were drawn in the wrong location.
     
  • Bug fix: Edit>Truncate X was broken when Data Processing mode was in effect.
     
  • Bug fix: If "Always auto-adjust scale factors on 3D plots" under Options>General was checked, that setting took precedence over any ContourScales command that was sent to DPlot in the initial plot creation (via DPlot_Plot, etc.). Subsequent ContourScales commands sent via DPlot_Command worked as expected. In this version the program-defined scale factors will be used regardless of the "Always auto-adjust..." setting.
     

September 21, 2005
Version 2.0.1.1

  • Bug fix: DPlot_AddData and DPlot_AddData8 with random 3D data were broken in the last several releases.
     

September 19, 2005
Version 2.0.1.0

  • Improved labeling of contour lines. In previous versions if a line segment crossing a grid triangle was less than 3 pixels long, no label was drawn at that line segment. The purpose of this decision point was to ensure that roundoff error did not cause labels to be drawn at the incorrect angle. For densely-populated plots this might have resulted in no labels being drawn. Thanks to Alan Lipp for his assistance with this problem.
     
  • For several macro/DDE commands, many parameters are now optional that were required in all previous versions. For example, on an XY plot you can force the extents of the Y axis and leave the extents of the X axis alone with [ManualScale(,ylo,,yhi)]. In this version this new capability is included in the ManualScale, LegendParams, NumTicks, TickInterval commands. Future versions will expand this capability to other commands.
     
  • FileSaveAs macro command may now include replaceable parameters |PATH|, |FILENAME|, and |EXT| in the filename argument. If used, the corresponding elements from the original file (assuming a plot was created via FileOpen) will be substituted.
     
  • You can now paste multiple data sets from the Windows clipboard for 3D scatter plots into DPlot at once. Data sets (groups of 3 columns) should be separated by a blank line.
     
  • Bug fix: Pasting additional data sets into a 3D scatter plot might have wiped out one or more of the previous data sets.
     
  • Bug fix: The Excel Add-In might have failed on a network installation with a runtime error code of 5. This was due to the Add-In using the App.Path property to change the working directory to the location of the Add-In. The App.Path property might have been returned as a UNC path (e.g. \\Server\Share) rather than a drive path, and the Add-In would fail when attempting to ChDrive to that "folder".
     
  • Bug fix: Axes at Zero option for XY plots did not work quite properly unless both the X and Y axes crossed 0.
     
  • Bug fix: Filter command might have caused DPlot to crash with an overflow error if the specified frequency values were greater than 1/2 the sampling frequency of the input.
     
  • Bug fix: User-specified extents were not properly saved to DPlot files for 1D plots (box-and-whisker plots and dot graphs).
     
  • Bug fix: Scale factors for 3D randomly-spaced points were not restored correctly from a saved DPlot file.
     
  • Bug fix: On XY plots, setting the "Maximum number of rows" in the legend to 1 (so that the legend should have a single row) did not work correctly.
     
  • Licensed version only: Added File Import plugin for AMO Transient Recorder Files.
     

July 15, 2005
Version 2.0.0.3

  • Added GIF file export plugin.
     
  • Trial version of DPlot now includes all image export plugin modules previously only distributed with the licensed version: BMP, JPG, PNG, TIF, and now GIF.
     
  • Bug fix: Using a negative scale factor for the Y values on 2D contour plots resulted in a blank plot.
     
  • Bug fix: In the last several releases, if you did not specify the size of plot for 3D surface plots using shaded bands of color (as opposed to contour lines), printed plots of 2D views would be forced to square, regardless of the plot extents or scale factors.
     
  • Bug fix: Magnitudes greater than 2^31 caused DPlot to crash if "Calendar date" or "Date and time" number formatting was used. This version checks for valid extents: -115859 (Oct 15, 1582) to 2958465 (Dec 31, 9999) and uses the default number formatting scheme if the actual extents are outside that range.
     

June 29, 2005
Version 2.0.0.1

  • Bug fix: The ability to read a text file containing 3D data (X,Y,Z columns) was broken in version 2.0.
     
  • Bug fix: Under some circumstances the angular labels on a polar plot were clipped when saving to an enhanced metafile or copying an enhanced metafile to the Clipboard.
     

June 27, 2005
Version 2.0

  • XY command now accepts numbers as times (e.g. 09:21:15.34 PM), dates, or date and time groups.
     
  • Calendar date and Date and time number formatting now allow dates from October 15, 1582 (first usage of the Gregorian calendar) up to December 31, 9999. Previous versions had the same limitations as MS Excel: January 1, 1900 to 2078.
     
  • The maximum number of point labels (created with Text>Label Points or a TextPointLabel macro/DDE command) has been increased from 50 to 100. A future release will remove the limit entirely.
     
  • You can now specify 0 values for the width and/or height of bitmap images copied to the clipboard under Edit>Copy>Dimensions. If either dimension is 0 then the corresponding document dimension will be substituted when you select Edit>Copy.
     
  • Added an option for bar charts to specify the space between bar groups (bars at the same ordinate). Amended BarWidth macro/DDE command to support this feature.
     
  • Grain size distribution plots had a few problems related to the axis type selection (No grid lines, Grid lines, or Box). "No grid lines" is now disabled for these plots and, if that option was previously selected, the axis type is forced to "Grid lines"
     
  • Changed Generate>Switch independent variable menu command to allow you to: a) not sort the resulting curves in increasing order of the newly-selected X values, and b) replace the existing curves with the result of this operation. Previous versions always sorted the new curves and always placed the results in a new document. Modified the SwitchX macro/DDE command to accept an options parameter; if omitted the curves will be sorted and placed in a new document.
     
  • Custom date formats and major and minor grid line types are saved to preference files.
     
  • Bug fix: Powers of 10 number formatting might have caused a crash under certain circumstances if the magnitude of the associated numbers was larger than 1E26.
     
  • Bug fix: On startup with Windows 2000 and XP, DPlot failed to create a \Preferences folder below the \Application Data\DPlot folder unless you had a previous default settings file (default.set) in the DPlot folder. This in turn led to the failure of all of the "Make defaults" checkboxes on various dialogs.
     
  • DPlot will now intepret hexadecimal values in multiple-column text files or from the clipboard if those values have a "0x" prefix.
     
  • Bug fix: Negative values on a scale using Time formatting were incorrect: -1 was shown as 1:00 AM rather than 11:00 PM, for example.
     

11 May 2005
Version 1.9.9.9

  • Bug fix: Last release's relaxation of date scale tick intervals introduced a bug that would in some circumstances cause incorrect scaling: the dates along the axis were inconsistent with the data values.
     
  • Bug fix: FileClose() macro/DDE command left uninitialized data behind that might cause a divide by 0 crash when subsequently opening a new document with a FileOpen or ForFilesIn command.
     

10 May 2005
Version 1.9.9.7

  • Licensed version only: Added a "Check for Updates" option on the Help menu. Of course this option will not be particularly useful until the next update, but in the future this feature should help alleviate many of the problems associated with e-mail notices. This option is disabled and hidden if you do not have write privileges to the folder where dplot.exe is installed. For any programmers who are wondering, this feature makes use of the excellent Web Update Wizard.
     
  • When interpreting multiple-column ASCII text files (file type D on the "Select File Type" dialog), if the first column contains calendar dates and the second column contains times and the file is space-delimited (rather than comma- or tab-delimited), those two columns are now grouped together as a date and time value. Previous versions would interpret these as separate data columns. This change does not effect comma- or tab-delimited columns w/o a delimiter between the date and time or date and time values surrounded by quotation marks, which were and continue to be interpreted correctly.
     
  • Last version's changes intended to make DPlot work on systems w/o admin privileges were not made to plugin modules that saved default settings to configuration files within the plugin folder. In this version those default settings are written to the registry, to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\DPlot\Plugins.
     
  • Also related to multiple-column ASCII text files: if there are more than 4 header lines in a space-delimited file, DPlot will use up to 3 lines before the start of the data to build legends and/or axis labels. For example if the 3 lines preceding the data are:
     
    RangePressureImpulse
    feetpsipsi-sec
    <blank><blank><blank>

    then the X axis label will be "Range, feet" and the legend entries for the 2 curves will be "Pressure, psi" and "Impulse, psi-sec".
     

  • Added GeneralOptions macro/DDE command to control the settings made with the General command on the Options menu.
     
  • Made several changes to both DPlot and DPLOTLIB.DLL concerning whether DPlot should be activated or not when calling DPLOTLIB functions. If DPlot is not hidden (as it is in the bitmap demos) then it will be activated, restored if minimized, and brought to the foreground by calls to DPlot_Plot. In all other cases (DPlot is hidden or with calls to DPlot_Command, DPlot_AddData, etc.), the Z order and activation of DPlot is left as is. This change is ineffective with console applications. This change fixes a previous crash: if DPlot was minimized at the time DPlot_Plot was called, on Windows 2000 (but curiously, not XP) DPlot crashed. It also eliminates annoying flashing of the calling application's caption when various DPLOTLIB functions are called.
     
  • More changes to right-click menu behavior:
    • On XY plots, if you right-click just outside the box surrounding the graph you will get the Grid lines or box submenu.
       
    • When right-clicking within the box surrounding the graph when either or both of the X and Y axes use a logarithmic scale, the Log Scale Tick Labels submenu is appended to the scales dropdown menu.
       
    • When clicking outside the box surrounding the graph, a scaled down version of the Options menu (minus menu commands that are handled in other areas) is displayed.
       
  • Automatic selection of tick mark intervals when "Specify interval" is checked has been relaxed a bit. In this version user-specified intervals less than 15 days are honored regardless of the extents.
     
  • Bug fix: Recent change in the interpretation of multiple-column ASCII text files to allow more leeway in date formats might have caused DPlot in some cases to incorrectly interpret a number as a date. Generally this bug led to DPlot skipping rows of real data once it found a number in the same column that could not be interpreted as a date.
     
  • Bug fix: On XY plots, transparent legend boxes with a frame were sometimes filled with black.
     
  • Bug fix: Generate mesh command was broken if the input data was Z values on a rectangular grid, as opposed to randomly-spaced X,Y,Z values.
     
  • Bug fix: SaveUndo() macro command was broken in version 1.9.9.5 and did not save an undo file.
     
  • Bug fix: Symbol styles were not properly saved to DPLOT.INI in version 1.9.9.5. Normally, default symbol styles are read from this file when you first start DPlot. Symbol styles for the active document are saved to this file when you close DPlot.
     
  • Bug fix: There were several problems with minor grid lines: lines drawn outside the extents of the plot when date scales were used and, on the Y scale, being drawn in the wrong location if minor grid lines on the X axis were not also used.
     
  • Bug fix: Version 1.9.9.5 of DPLOTLIB.DLL did not properly start DPlot Jr in a hidden state when hidden was called for.
     

1 May 2005
Version 1.9.9.5

  • DPlot no longer requires any sort of administrative privileges to install or run. Preference files, contour palette files, and dplot.ini are now saved to the \DPlot folder below the user's Application Data folder (e.g. c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\DPlot ), macros are now saved to \DPlot\Macros below the Application Data folder, and the default folder for saving data files is the \DPlot folder below the "My Documents" folder (e.g. c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\DPlot. When this version is first run, any existing macros, the default.set preference file (if it exists), and dplot.ini are moved from the DPlot folder to the appropriate folder. Example DPlot files will be copied to the ...\My Documents\DPlot folder.
     
    Please note: If you use DPLOTLIB.DLL to drive DPlot or DPlot Jr in a hidden state from your own application, the above change requires an updated version of DPLOTLIB.DLL. The old version will continue to work, but if DPlot is set to "always maximize" then it will not be hidden when launched from your application. The new version of DPLOTLIB.DLL will launch DPlot or DPlot Jr correctly. DPLOTLIB.DLL is distributed with DPlot Jr and also as a separate download.
     
  • Added right-click menues for setting the number formats used on the coordinate axes. Click on any number to bring up a list of available formats.
     
  • The Curve list of the Symbol/Line Styles dialog for XY plots now allows multiple selections. So you can, for example, set the line and symbol styles for several curves with one operation rather than several. Thanks to Mason Guy for the suggestion.
     
  • Added accelerators (shortcut keys) for the text attribute buttons for the titles and axis labels, text notations, legend, fill regions, etc.
     
  • Changed the behavior of right-click menu when you click within the graph area of an XY plot. Previous versions showed the Edit menu, which was not especially useful. This version shows scale types (Linear X Linear Y, etc.) and any options specific to that scale type.
     
  • The Swap X,Y command now swaps user-specified extents, tick mark settings, number formats, axis labels, and other axis-specific attributes in addition to the X and Y values. For XY plots this swap is performed only if all curves are selected. Previous versions might have been confusing if the user-specified X extents were very different than the Y extents, for example.
     
  • Bug fix: If you used "Specify extents" with a polar plot and subsequently switched to any other scale type, DPlot crashed. This was due to the low and high extents being set internally to meaningless numbers that were ignored for polar plots. An aesthetic, related change: if a polar plot had angular values in degrees (rather than the default radians) and tick mark intervals were manually set, when switching to a different scale type you'd generally get many more tick marks than intended, since the interval is stored internally in units of radians. In this version the tick mark interval is multiplied by 180/PI when switching from polar plots to another scale. The reverse operation is performed when switching back to a polar plot.
     
  • Bug fix: One more glitch with printing surface plots with shaded bands has been fixed. In the previous 3 releases if you did not have Specify size and WYWISYG on the Extents/Tick Marks/Size dialog checked, the fonts used in the plot were a very large scale and resulted in overlapping text and not much else. In this version if Specify size is not checked, the plot will be scaled to an 8 inch x 8 inch box, and scaled down if necessary to fit the page margins. To ensure that the printout resembles the plot you see on the display, though, it has always been and will always be best to check the Specify size and WYSIWYG boxes.
     
  • Bug fix: $STDEV text shortcut displayed the result using standard C runtime function, while most other shortcuts used DPlot's internal number formatting routine. This is primarily of importance to users who use a comma for a decimal point.
     
  • Bug fix: It was all but impossible to add or edit more than one point label for 3D plots due to a bug with updating the dialog when selecting a different label. Thanks to Steven Dixon for pointing out the problem.
     
  • Bug fix: The recent addition of displayed Z min, max, and average values caused DPlot to crash if you entered X and Y extents that were completely outside the limits of the data for 3D plots.
     
  • Bug fix: On Windows XP if you single-stepped through all or part of a macro and did not stop the macro within the macro editor, instead shutting down DPlot, the macro editor was left in memory.
     
  • Bug fix: The Average surfaces command for surface plots contained an error that sometimes resulted in a crash if the first plot selected consisted of randomly-spaced 3D points.
     
  • Bug fix: View>Playback feature did not properly clip graphs to the box surrounding the graph.
     

4 April 2005
Version 1.9.9

  • Bug fix: Several problems with text shortcuts ($YMAX, etc.) have been fixed: $MEAN always displayed the mean for the first data set. $STDEV calculation was inadvertently fouled up when checks against overflows were plugged in to the calculation.
     

3 April 2005
Version 1.9.8.9

  • Removed the 16-color limitation for XY plots; all curves may now have unique colors assigned. This change will not break previously saved DPlot files: if a DPlot file contains more than 16 curves then the colors for the 17th and subsequent curves will automatically be copied from the colors 1-16. This change may produce unintended consequences with programs that drive DPlot via DPLOTLIB.DLL: Color specifications for the 17th and subsequent curves will not be automatically set. See ColorCycle command below for a quick fix.
     
  • Added ColorCycle macro/DDE command. This command allows you to quickly copy a specified number of colors to all subsequent groups of the same number of colors for XY plots.
     
  • For 3D surface plots and scatter plots, the user-defined color palette may now contain up to 64 colors. Previous limit was 16.
     
  • On XY plots if you hover the mouse over a data point for approximately 1/2 second, a tooltip-like window will show the legend (if any) and the X and Y values of that data point.
     
  • Calendar date number formatting may now include the day of the year (Jan 1 = 1, Dec 31 = 365 or 366) by including a lowercase n in the date formatting string. For example, Feb. 25, 2005 formatted with "n/yyyy" will be displayed as 56/2005.
     
  • For XY plots, most input dialogs that take numeric input that is related to the X or Y axes now display those numbers and accept input using the number format for the associated axis. For example, if calendar date is used on the X axis then the X limits of some operation may be entered using m/d/yyyy format. Simple equations that are not a function of some variable may also be used. For example you can enter "2*PI" rather than "6.28...." as an input. This change has been applied to the Extents/Tick Marks/Size dialog, the dialog for Y=f(X) and similar equation-parsing routines, the Reference Lines dialog, and many of the commands on the Edit menu.
     
  • Text placeholders ($YMIN, $YMAX, etc.) now use the same number formatting as the corresponding axis, if any. Previous versions always displayed these values using the default number format.
     
  • Polar plot options now includes an option to specify which radial line the axial grid lines start at. In all previous versions axial lines started at the center of the plot. This change helps avoid clutter near the center of the plot.
     
  • For bar charts with a single data set, added an option to use unique colors for each bar.
     
  • For XY plots, added the ability to specify text labels to use in place of or in addition to the numbers, dates, or times on the X axis. This is particularly handy for many bar charts in which the X axis is not linear or is not easily described with numbers. See Text>X Labels.
     
  • DPlot will now process time values in text files (e.g. 3:58:17.2435 PM) down to microseconds. Previous versions ignored digits after the hundredths of seconds place.
     
  • A forced change in version 1.9.8.5 - resetting extents and tick mark intervals after using Operate on X or Operate on Y - is now optional. See Options>General: Adjust extents after applying transform to data values.
     
  • Added SetPanFraction macro/DDE command, which controls how much the plot is panned when 1) using the arrow keys on a zoomed plot, 2) sending data to DPlot via the XY or XYXY commands or 3) when adding data with DPlot_AddData. Default value = 0.5. In the case of the XY and XYXY commands and the DPlot_AddData function, this means that the plot will be scrolled by half of its width whenever the X extents are exceeded.
     
  • The Delete points in box command for XY plots was very inefficient for large data sets, particularly those with unsorted X values.
     
  • Licensed version only: Modified the solution procedure for Friedlander's equation in the More curve fits plugin to ignore the contribution of time values occurring before any iteration's assumed arrival time or after an iteration's assumed duration. In previous versions, it was necessary to uncheck the Fit all points box and specify the start and end of the points you wanted to fit.
     
  • Licensed version only: Added "Z Table" file import plugin. This plugin takes tabulated Z values from a text file with assumed equal spacing in both directions (X = columns, Y = rows), prompts you for the X and Y extents, and produces a surface plot.
     
  • Bug fix: Change to version 1.9.8.5 to speed up printing of 3D surface plots with shaded color bands did not work on many printers and on none of the Adobe Acrobat virtual printers. This version should work on all printers.
     
  • Bug fix: Subtract surfaces command for 3D surface plots might have crashed if the source plot had user-specified extents and "Always auto-adjust scale factors on 3D plots" was checked under Options>General.
     
  • Bug fix: DPlot sometimes incorrectly clipped portions of 2D views of 3D surface plots with shaded bands of color if user-specified extents were used.
     
  • Bug fix: Function parser (used by Y=f(X), etc.) returned incorrect results if the function contained a number with a trailing decimal point followed by a close parenthesis. Function parser also crashed if the equation contained a leading decimal point.
     
  • Bug fix: The Find intersections command did not correctly turn off a flag indicating that the curve had evenly-spaced X values when you elected to insert a new data point at the intersection. This might have led to an incorrectly-saved DPlot file: one that specified a constant X spacing with only the start and end values of X stored in the file, which in turn led to the incorrect X values being generated when you reopened the file.
     
  • Bug fix: Zoom information for XY plots was saved to DPlot files with an insufficient number of significant figures, particularly for date values on the X axis. This problem in turn might have led to a crash when reopening previously saved DPlot files if the saved low extent was equal to the high extent. DPlot now checks for this problem when reading DPlot files and, for new plots, saves those extents with up to 12 significant figures.
     
  • Bug fix: PI Fractions number formatting sometimes left off a leading minus sign for negative numbers, and also failed to reduce fractions to their simplest form. For example π/2 might be displayed as 5π/10 in some cases.
     
  • Bug fix: The window parameter of the EditSmooth macro/DDE command has been ignored in the last several revisions.
     
  • Bug fix: Last version's change of supporting very long lines of text in input files broke drag-and-drop functionality for most file types. The routine that attempts to determine what format a dropped file is returned a false positive for file type D with most file formats.
     
  • Bug fix: For probability scales on the X axis, the X axis label overlapped the numbers below the X axis on some output devices: various printers and metafiles. Same problem existed for the numbers on the upper X axis and the 2nd or 3rd title line, if used.
     
  • Bug fix: On XY plots, curve labels (text appearing beside the last data point in a curve) were clipped when drawn to metafiles.
     

21 February 2005
Version 1.9.8.5

  • Licensed version only: Made significant improvements to the Bitmap to 3D file import plugin.
     
  • Files opened as type D (Multiple columns (2D)) or K (3D - X, Y, Z columns), including but not limited to .CSV files, may now have lines up to 8192 characters long. Previous versions were limited to 1024 characters. Similarly, saved CSV and tab-separated values files may now have lines up to 32,768 characters long. In previous versions attempting to save CSV or tab-separated columns with lines longer than 1024 characters resulted in an I/O error message.
     
  • The "Multiple" feature on the Print dialog (allowing you to print multiple documents on the same page) has been amended to allow an arbitrary number of columns. Previous versions were limited to 1 row, 1 column, or 2 columns.
     
  • Modified the FilePrint macro/DDE command to accept a printer name. This allows you to print to other than the default printer without displaying the standard Print dialog.
     
  • Added FilePrintMultiple macro/DDE command, which is equivalent to clicking the Multiple button on the Print dialog.
     
  • Modified FilePageSetup macro/DDE command to accept an optional paper size parameter.
     
  • Surface plots drawn with shaded bands of colors (as opposed to contour lines and waterfall plots) took an exceptionally long time to print and created huge print spool files for many (though not all) printer drivers. In this version these plots are drawn to a bitmap and the bitmap is then painted to the page, rather than drawing all graphics directly to the printer driver. Resulting print speed is considerably better than previous versions.
     
  • You can now control the color of the coordinate axes. Previous versions forced use of the "Window Text" color for displays and black for all other output devices. Added corresponding AxisColor macro/DDE command.
     
  • Added BarWidth macro/DDE command to control the width of bars in a bar chart.
     
  • Filenames of DPlot files specified in commandline operations are now internally prefixed with the full path to the file. This change is primarily important because of a change in version 1.9.8.3: If a filename was not specified in a FileSaveAs macro command then the path and filename of the existing plot was used, along with a default extension for the file format. Without this change, if you launched DPlot from a DOS window and specified a DPlot file w/o a path, then FileSaveAs without a filename would save the file to the DPlot folder, regardless of where the original DPlot file was stored.
     
  • If working with an old or newly-saved DPlot (.grf) file, the "Save As" dialog will now initially show the folder where the DPlot file is stored. In all previous versions the "Save As" dialog initially showed the folder last saved to.
     
  • Added date(year,month,day) function to menu commands that parse an equation (Y=f(X), for example). This function returns the Excel 1900 date system serial number for the input date. This is especially handy for shifting axis values relative to some date. For example if a plot's X values start at 0 and you want those values to instead be relative to some date, you can use Edit>Operate on X with "X+date(<year>,<month>,<day>)".
     
  • You can now specify unique number formats for secondary X and Y axes. Previous versions used the same number format as the primary axis. Thanks to Richard Swaim for the suggestion.
     
  • For the Operate on <X,Y,Z> commands on the Edit menu, a few extra steps are taken to avoid confusing results and/or a flood of grid lines. If 1) the transformation is only a function of the respective axis, e.g. with Operate on X and X=X*50+6 but not with X=X+Y, and 2) the transformation is applied to all curves on the plot, then manually-set extents and tick mark intervals on that axis are transformed as well. If the above two conditions are not both true or if an error occurs when applying the transform, then manual extents and tick marks are turned off. In all cases, zooms are removed.
     
  • For the file import plugin interface, added plugin_readfileex, which is identical to plugin_readfile with the addition of a character string argument containing optional settings (or whatever information a plugin author would like to pass to the function from DPlot). Added an optional "Options" argument to the FileOpen macro/DDE command to specify those options. See the Help file writeup for plugin_readfileex and FileOpen for more information.
     
  • For file import plugins, a feature that has been present for a while but undocumented: it is possible for a plugin to determine whether it was called as a result of a File>Open menu command as opposed to a FileOpen macro/DDE command, commandline operation, drag-and-drop, "Open With..." in Explorer, etc. In the latter cases plugin authors should in most cases use default options rather than presenting the user with an input dialog, or, alternatively, let the user decide whether to use default options for those operations. See the Bitmap to 3D file import plugin for an example. See the Help file description of the plugin_typecheck function for more information.
     
  • DPLOTLIB.DLL is now distributed with both __stdcall and __cdecl calling conventions. DPLOTLIB.DLL (as with all previous versions) uses __stdcall, DPLOTLIB_CC.DLL uses __cdecl. This change was made for users of languages for which it is not convenient to call __stdcall functions. For example, some FORTRAN compilers use a single commandline switch to specify the calling convention. This limitation makes it, at best, difficult to call functions in one library that uses __cdecl and another library that uses __stdcall. As always, DPLOTLIB.DLL and accompanying source examples in C, VB, and FORTRAN are distributed along with DPlot Jr and as a separate download.
     
  • Added Salford FORTRAN example to the DPLOTLIB distribution. Thanks to L. J. Farrugia, University of Glasgow for the assistance.
     
  • Added batch file to compile C examples using GNU C (gcc). C source files have been modified to work with Microsoft, Borland, LCC, and GCC compilers with no fuss.
     
  • VB.NET DPLOTLIB examples are now a bit more .NET-like thanks to the assistance of Tommy Engstrom.
     
  • Documentation for DPLOTLIB has been updated and is generally a bit more useful. Documentation is included with the distribution and may also be viewed online.
     
  • Bug fix: The Reorder curves menu command allowed you to shift the position of curves whose only purpose was to provide error bar amplitudes. This had no practical benefit and was confusing. These curves are now not included in the list and will not be shifted in the order.
     
  • Bug fix: If you erased a curve that provided error values for another curve, the curve with error bars kept error bars but the source of the amplitudes shifted down in the curve list, which was at best confusing. You are still allowed to erase error bar sources, but in this revsion when you do so, any curve that used this source has its error bars turned off.
     
  • Bug fix: The Call macro command gave unreliable results, primarily because the calling macro did not wait for the called macro to complete before processing any remaining commands. This version of the macro facility ensures that the calling macro waits for called macros to finish.
     
  • Bug fix: On 2D contour plots of random 3D points if negative scale factors were used on either the X or Y axis then tick marks and numbers along those axes were not drawn.
     
  • Bug fix: Time format selected with the Number Formats menu command was not saved to preference files.
     
  • Bug fix: Fixed number of decimal places setting was ignored for "PI Multiples" number format.
     
  • Bug fix: Bar chart formatting options on the Histogram input dialog were ignored.
     
  • Bug fix: Several operations that produced a new curve after operating on an existing curve (e.g. Edit>Smooth) always associated the new curve with the primary Y axis though the source curve might have been associated with the secondary Y axis.
     
  • Bug fix: Several input procedures that allowed entry of date and time values erroneously rounded up the date if the time was past noon. So if, for example, your X axis used Date and time number formatting, simply opening the Extents/Tick Marks/Size dialog with user-specified extents and clicking OK would increase an extent by 1 day if that value included a time later than noon. This error also existed in the Edit Data dialogs. Thanks to Richard Swaim for assisting with the problem.
     
  • Bug fix: Partially-filled un-antialiased symbols were not filled after the 1024'th data point on XY plots.
     
  • Bug fix: The "Multiple" feature on the Print dialog did not work well if you printed 3D data and XY plots on the same page. Clipping regions established by XY plots were not removed when the drawing was completed, so that subsequent plots that did not use clipping regions (3D plots do not) were not drawn.
     

29 January 2005
Version 1.9.8.3

  • Added Define Boundary command on the Options menu for 3D surface plots. This allows you to define concave exterior surface edges and holes within the surface. The new DPLOTLIB.DLL function DPlot_3DBorder allows you to specify this border from another program.
     
  • Point labels may now be added to 3D surface plots in addition to XY plots. See Label Points command on the Text menu. Added corresponding TextPointLabel3D macro/DDE command. Note: Currently limited to 2D representations of the plot.
     
  • Added support for inequality operators (<, >, and =) to commands that parse an equation (Y=f(X), etc.). These operators result in 1.0 if the test is true, 0.0 if not. The inequality operators have a lower precedence than any other operator and so the test should generally be surrounded by parentheses. (Example: 1+x<5*2 is parsed as (1+x)<(5*2), not 1+(x<5)*2.)
     
  • Added support for min(a,b) and max(a,b), and Excel-like conditional formulas "if(test,if_true,if_false)" to commands that parse an equation. Min and max return the minimum/maximum of two comma-separated values or expressions. The if function works very much like the Excel equivalent: "if x<5 then y=x^2, otherwise y=(10-x)^2" can be expressed as if(x<5,x^2,(10-x)^2).
     
  • Added floor and ceil functions to the function parser. These are equivalent to the C language functions of the same name: floor(x) returns the largest integer that is less than or equal to x; ceil(x) returns the smallest integer that is greater or equal to x.
     
  • Added right-click menues to change line and symbol styles on XY plots.
     
  • FileSaveAs macro/DDE command has been amended to use the existing filename of a plot if no filename is included in the command, or the plot title (text appearing in the title bar) if the plot has not previously been saved to disk. For example in previous versions FileSaveAs("Portable Network Graphics","") would save a file named .png in the DPlot folder regardless of how the plot was created, while this revision will save the file c:\my data\plot.grf as c:\my data\plot.png.
     
  • Added Cycle symbol colors checkbox to the Symbol/Line Styles dialog box. If checked, colors of symbols for the selected curve will cycle through the colors assigned to each curve on the plot. The number of colors cycled through will be the minimum of the number of curves on the plot and the size of the color palette for XY plots (currently 16 colors). The 1st and (N+1)th points will use color 1, the 2nd and (N+2)th points will use color 2, etc. Added equivalent SymbolCycleColors macro/DDE command. Thanks to Mason Guy for the suggestion.
     
  • Added the ability to specify up to 4 user-defined sieve sizes on grain size distribution plots. See the Grain Size Options command under Options>Linear/Log Scaling. Added corresponding GrainSizeFlagsEx and GrainSizeOther macro/DDE commands. Thanks to Tim Green for the suggestion.
     
  • Always auto-adjust scale factors on 3D plots (under Options>General) is now applied whenever you change the plot extents by zooming or specifying extents under Options>Extents/Tick marks/Size. In previous versions this setting was only applied when the plot was first created and when the data was edited.
     
  • The Excel Add-In's XYYY command has been made a bit more efficient (plots faster). In previous versions if you selected data to plot by clicking column headers, rather than dragging the mouse, Ctrl+Shift+End, etc., then the XYYY command examined all 65536 rows on the sheet for data values. This version is smarter about determining where the data ends. Thanks to Excel help book author Bernard Liengme for the assist.
     
  • Licensed version only: Bitmap-to-3D file import plugin had an arbitrary limit of 256 rows or columns in the surface plots that it produced. These limits have been removed.
     
  • Bug fix: Macro editor (dpmac.exe) did not shut down properly if you were single-stepping through a macro when you closed the editor by clicking the Close button in the title bar (as opposed to File>Exit). This led to a new instance of the macro editor every time you repeated this operation and eventual sluggish performance.
     
  • Bug fix: File type D mishandled reading times and date and time groups if the time did not include seconds.
     
  • Bug fix: New feature of automatically creating a plot title or legend entry from an equation caused the text to be terminated with an ASCII 0 when a text file (DPlot file, .CSV or tab-separated columns) was saved. This did not cause any problems with reading the file in DPlot but might have caused a problem for some text editors.
     
  • Bug fix: User-specified tick mark interval settings for the Z axis were not saved to preference files. If saved to the default preferences file default.set, this omission might have caused DPlot to crash when a new 3D plot was opened. This problem has been fixed at both ends: preference file is updated properly and DPlot checks against invalid settings for 3D plots.
     
  • Bug fix: Once you selected Scatter plot on the Open dialog for file type K, that setting became persistent regardless of whether that box was checked or not.
     
  • Bug fix: Constants did not work prperly with the Y=f(X,Y1,Y2,...) command. Specifically, constant A was overwritten with the value of Y1 if Y1 was used in the function, B by Y2 if used, etc.
     
  • Bug fix: Undo feature for surface plots of random 3D points has been hit-or-miss, apparently from the start. Undoing changes to the data might have caused a crash.
     
  • Bug fix: Gray scale palette on surface plots produced all black if the number of intervals used was > 224.
     

16 Jan 2005
Version 1.9.8

  • DPlot now examines input 3D points for a rectangular grid arrangement of points (either the entire data set or a significant portion of it) and uses a much simpler, significantly faster triangulation routine if found. This can make a dramatic difference in triangulation speed for large data sets, e.g. a few seconds as opposed to several minutes with a million or more data points.
     
  • For contour plots of random 3D points, traded calculation speed for memory by reducing the memory usage by 100 bytes per triangle (was formerly 112 bytes per triangle). For medium-sized data sets this change results in a small performance penalty, but for very large data sets (~1 million points and larger) this change will result in a significant drawing speed boost on the majority of systems (those with less than 1 Gb RAM).
     
  • DPlot now does a better (faster) job of handling zoomed 2D contour plots. You will most likely not notice a significant difference unless your data set contains several hundred thousand points or more.
     
  • For 3D plots the minimum, maximum, and average Z value is now displayed in the status bar. These are the values for the portion of the plot that is displayed rather than for the entire data set.
     
  • For 3D surface plots and scatter plots, slightly modified the behavior for view elevation angle of 90 degrees. With the azimuth also set to 90 degrees, the plot and axis label orientations are now very similar to a 2D top-down view: X axis at the bottom of the plot, Y axis labels along the left side of the plot. This change is more meaningful for scatter plots since DPlot does not provide a 2D option.
     
  • Added "Use actual displayed limits" checkbox to the Contour Options dialog. If checked, the lower and upper limits of the contour intervals will be adjusted to match the limits of the portion of the plot shown when you zoom in/out or force the plot extents by using the Extents/Tick Marks/Size command on the Options menu.
     
  • When reading data files for a 3D surface plot or scatter plot (file type K on the Select File Type dialog) you now have the same Pick Columns to Plot option available for XY plots. For example in a file containing 10 columns you can now read X, Y, and/or Z from any of columns 1-10. Also added a similar command line option /xcyczc.
     
  • Added Find best-fit plane command to the Generate menu for 3D surface plots. This command uses least squares technique to find the plane (Z=A*X + B*Y + C) that best matches the surface.
     
  • Added Subtract a plane command to the Generate menu for 3D surface plots.
     
  • Added Subtract surfaces command to the Generate menu for 3D surface plots. This command produces a new surface plot that is the result of subtracting the amplitudes of one surface from another.
     
  • Added Average surfaces command to the Generate menu for 3D surface plots. This command produces a new surface plot with the average amplitudes of two or more surfaces.
     
  • Changed the behavior associated with custom contour palettes for 3D plots. In previous versions if the number of specified contour intervals was less than the number of colors in the palette, the generated colors were produced from a smooth blend of colors between the first and last palette entries, ignoring all intermediate entries. In this version the generated colors are interpolated from the entire palette regardless of whether the number of intervals is less than, equal to, or more than the number of entries in the custom palette.
     
  • Pasting data from the clipboard into XY plots now works essentially the same as reading a muliple-column text file: clipboard text may contain columns of dates, times, date and time groups, and currencies. Other non-numeric columns will be ignored.
     
  • Added Switch independent variable command to the Generate menu for XY plots, and corresponding SwitchX macro/DDE command. This function allows you to substitute the amplitudes from one curve for the independent variable (X values) of all other curves in the document. Thanks to Bill Sieber at Aerojet for the suggestion.
     
  • For "Calendar date" number formatting on the X axis of XY plots, the Extents/Tick Marks/Size dialog will now include the time in the extents fields if the extents are less than 10 days and the fractional part of either extent is greater than 1 minute. In previous versions it was possible to cause DPlot to balk with a "High and low values cannot be equal" message simply by clicking OK with "Specify extents" checked.
     
  • Added mouse-activated option for point labels in XY plots. If set, the label is only drawn when the user's mouse cursor is over the corresponding data point. The label will not be drawn to printed plots or saved images.
     
  • FFT and playback now check for "microsec", "µsec", and "{\sm}sec" in the X axis label when attempting to determine the units of time in the input. Previous versions only checked for milliseconds (as opposed to seconds). For FFTs the units of time are only important in determining the correct units for the frequency scale in the FFT. Microseconds are also now an option on the Filter dialog and the corresponding EditFilter macro/DDE command.
     
  • Sort command on Edit menu for XY plots now also sorts data points with equal X values in increasing Y order.
     
  • Added Clip Y command on the Edit menu for XY plots. This is similar to Truncate X but works on a range in Y rather than X.
     
  • Y=f(X), Z=f(X,Y), and Y=f(X,Y1,Y2,...) menu commands now automatically generate legend entries (or plot title for 3D surface plots) from the equation used to generate the curve or surface.
     
  • Improved Help file index with regards to searching for macro/DDE commands.
     
  • Removed several remnants of DPlot's older single-precision data storage. Copy Data command on the Edit now preserves up to 12 significant figures rather than 7; FFT command now gives more precise results.
     
  • Licensed version only: Bitmap-to-3D file import plugin has been amended to work with a wide variety of image formats (GIF, JPG, TIF, PNG, TGA, etc.) and now works with any bit depth (previous versions were limited to 8 bits). For bit depths other than 8, the plugin converts the image internally to 8-bit grayscale with color index 0=black, index 255=white.
     
  • Licensed version only: Corrected a few problems with the file import plugin for Gould DAT files. Previous versions assumed Motorola byte-ordering for 16-bit data and also did not accommodate the larger file headers produced by the Accura 100 oscilloscope. Thanks to Dustin Houseman, USAATC for the assist.
     
  • Bug fix: Triangulation routine used for randomly-spaced 3D points exited without warning if memory allocation failed due to an 'Out of memory' condition. In practice this condition would only happen with very large data sets and little or no free disk space.
     
  • Bug fix: "Specify extents" when used with polar plots and saved to a DPlot file resulted in the plot being truncated with extents from 0 to 360 degrees (negative angles ignored, in other words) when the plot was reopened.
     
  • Bug fix: A fairly recent edition of allowing a single contour line on 3D plots led to a bug that caused DPlot to crash when plotting 3D data if a default settings file (DEFAULT.SET) had been saved. The fix to this bug also led to better handling of the number of contour intervals saved to a preferences file. In previous versions this value was regarded as absolute; a good interval was found based on the number of intervals and the low and high values in the data, and the specified number of intervals was used even if this resulted in the low or high interval being well outside the limits of the data. In this version, the number of intervals saved to a preference file is regarded as a guideline; the interval is determined as before but the number of intervals is adjusted up or down to more closely match the data.
     
  • Bug fix: On 3D plots with shaded bands if the Z extremes were far outside the limits of the color scale used, it was possible to cause a crash due to an integer overflow when computing colors to use.
     
  • Bug fix: FilePageSetup macro/DDE command's Orientation parameter has been broken in the last several releases.
     
  • Bug fix: DPLOTLIB.DLL's DPlot_AddData function did not work in all cases with XY plots if multiple Y axes were used. And the [XY()] and [XYXY()] commands resulted in an annoying flashing if multiple Y axes were used.
     

1 December 2004
Version 1.9.7.8

  • DPlot does a better job of eliminating white space between the Y axis titles and the axis numbers for all number formats, particularly those involving superscript codes (powers of 10, for example).
     
  • Gridline color is stored and retrieved correctly from preference files (File>Get/Save Preferences).
     
  • If you zoom in on a 2D view of 3D data and then switch to a 3D view, the zoomed extents are now used for the 3D view. In previous versions the 3D rendering ignored the zoom values.
     
  • Bug fix: Reading date/time groups in comma-separated values files was broken by a "fix" in version 1.9.7.5
     
  • Bug fix: "Date and time" number formatting did not work particularly well with the Extents/Tick Marks/Size command. Code to read a date/time sequence was too restrictive and often translated the input value to 0 if the expected format was not used.
     
  • Bug fix: Macro facility did not allow you to save an unformatted binary file within a ForFilesIn loop.
     

28 October 2004
Version 1.9.7.6

  • Bug fix: 3D scatter plots were broken in the previous update.
     
  • Legend on 3D plots is now drawn at a fixed distance from the right edge of the plot, rather than right-justified on the display, printed page, etc.
     

24 October 2004
Version 1.9.7.5

  • Added the ability to embed placeholders in title lines, axis labels, legend entries, and notations for data minima, maxima, mean, and standard deviation. For example "$YMAX" in a title line will be replaced with the maximum Y value for all data sets when the plot is drawn. For more information search the Help file for 'maxima'.
     
  • Another significant improvement was made to removing overlaying X,Y points from 3D data. This will be most noticeable with very large (>100,000 points) data sets.
     
  • Added an option for bar charts to display percentages of the total for ALL data sets. The default is to show percentages of the total for the data set of the labelled bar.
     
  • Using Edit mode or the Edit Data command on the Edit menu, dates on the X axis may be entered using M/d/yyyy format rather than as Excel serial date numbers.
     
  • Added PasteLink() macro/DDE command. This is equivalent to using the Paste Special menu command with the Link box checked. Improved behavior of linked data: in previous versions if you linked data from one DPlot plot to another plot DPlot might have become temporarily confused about which plot was associated with which document window.
     
  • Bug fix: DPlot sometimes failed to find the correct start line for data values in multiple-column ASCII text files if the data lines contained different numbers of leading spaces.
     

30 August 2004
Version 1.9.7.2

  • Starting with version 1.8.3.3, a very inefficient routine for removing overlaying X,Y points from random 3D data was used. For several thousand points this did not result in a significant delay, but for tens of thousands of points became very noticeable. For 100,000 or more points DPlot required a lot of patience.
     
  • Error bars now use the Symbol Frequency setting on the Symbol/Line Styles dialog to determine the frequency of error bars. Previous versions drew error bars at every data point.
     
  • Extended last version's new feature of allowing dates to be entered as M/d/yyyy rather than Excel serial dates to several dialogs.
     
  • Added a method to specify that type 11 files (3D, 3 column ASCII text) should be interpreted as 3D scatter plots rather than 3D surface plots. On the command line, use /f267 <filename> (rather than /f11 <filename>). In a macro or when included in a DPlot_Command call, use FileType(267).
     
  • Bug fix: FileType macro/DDE command was often ignored. In particular DPlot was prone to determining the file type itself, and overriding the FileType command.
     
  • Bug fix: Fixed a remnant of a bug addressed in the last release. If you somehow printed a document which had never been drawn to the display, typically by using the Multiple feature, DPlot crashed due to an uninitialized data problem. This error was fixed for files opened within DPlot, but was still broken for multiple files opened on the command line. The problem data is now initialized properly in all cases.
     

9 August 2004
Version 1.9.7.1

  • Added an option to draw grid lines above fill patterns, curves, and/or reference lines. See Options>Symbol/Line Styles. Added corresponding GridLinesOnTop macro/DDE command.
     
  • Added Degrees, Minutes and Degrees, Minutes, Seconds number formats.
     
  • This version is a bit more flexible with tick mark intervals on scales that use Calendar Date or Date and Time number formatting. Previous versions fixed the tick mark interval at 1/2 month or 1 month regardless of user-specified settings on the Extents/Tick Marks/Size dialog. This version allows you to set the tick mark interval to 1/2 month, 1 month, 2 months, 6 months, or 1 year.
     
  • User-specified extents on the Extents/Tick Marks/Size dialog for calendar dates are now quite a bit easier to enter. You can now use M/d/yyyy format rather than being forced to enter Excel serial dates (July 31, 2004 = 38199, for example).
     
  • User-specified tick mark intervals on the Extents/Tick Marks/Size dialog now include a unit selection when the corresponding axis uses Time, Date and Time, Calendar Date, Degrees, Minutes or Degrees, Minutes, Seconds number formatting. For example you may enter a tick mark interval in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, or years for Date and Time formatting rather than being restricted to days.
     
  • Added an option for grain size distribution plots to use Udden-Wentworth size classification rather than AASHTO (American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials) scale. The Udden-Wentworth scale is typically used by geologists while the AASHTO scale is normally used in construction.
     
  • For polar plots, bar charts, and grain size distribution plots added a Make defaults option on the respective Options dialogs. This saves the current option settings to the preference file DEFAULT.SET, so that these options will be in effect when new plots are created. This will be particularly useful for those producing polar plots with angles in degrees rather than radians.
     
  • Added an option to the TextPointLabel macro/DDE command to specify label position as an offset in physical inches.
     
  • Bug fix: In previous versions memory for the first document was not properly freed when closing that document. This resulted in DPlot consuming more and more memory as you opened and closed documents and was particularly a problem if you worked with one (and only one) open document and plots consisting of millions of data points. Thanks to Eric Gross for help in finding the problem.
     
  • Bug fix: On plots containing special text formatting codes (subscripts, superscripts, color, etc.), fonts were not properly deleted on Windows 95, 98, and Me systems. This resulted in a drain on system resources and eventual program sluggishness and/or graphic problems if you ran DPlot long enough. Thanks to Scott Brilz for helping isolate the problem.
     
  • Bug fix: Several features that allowed you to pick coordinates off a plot with your mouse while a dialog box was open incorrectly determined that the mouse was outside the plot (beep) if DPlot was not maximized.
     
  • Bug fix: If you somehow printed a document which had never been drawn to the display (for example, opening multiple DPlot files with a single File>Open command with the document window maximized, then printing using the Multiple feature), DPlot crashed due to an uninitialized data problem. Thanks to Jürgen Metzger for help in isolating this problem.
     
  • Bug fix: File import plugins sometimes failed and caused a crash when appending data to existing plots and/or when reading multiple files.
     
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