                      Grace list of changes (since 5.1.*)


5.99.0



  KNOWN ISSUES


Grace-5.99.0 is a preview release of the forthcoming Grace-6. What does
"preview" mean?

* First, the new format of project files, xgr, has not yet stabilized. In other
words, anything you save with 5.99.0 most probably will not load in the
further 5.99.* and in the final 6.0 release without manual tweaking of some
extent.

* Another big deficiency of this release is that the old command interpreter
has been removed, with no replacement on the horizon as of yet. In other words,
any script-based usage of Grace is impossible now.

Other, smaller issues:

* Non-linear fit is not there (this is a consequence of the above)
* Region interface isn't finished
* Rotated arcs are not functional
* Stacked line plots with filled interior may have symbols shadowed
* Part of the "Point explorer" tool functionality isn't available yet


  Functionality

 !  [ES] all elements of a project now form a true tree structure with
         rendering following the order. This solved a lot of requests
         (including reps. #226, #806, #894, #960, #1005, #1177, #1229, #1255)
 !  [ES] each element has a string id which can be set to a meaningful value
         (hence solving rep. #1367, #1384)
 *  [ES] all transformation dialogs: act on all data columns (including #659),
         provide destination selectors (rep. #837), use new set selectors
         everywhere (reps. #885, #1195)
 !  [ES] Fourier transforms fully reworked (including reps. #554, #630,
         #684, #1216, #1391)
 !  [ES] feature extraction reworked (including rep. #1130)
 !  [ES] diff/derivatives reworked (including rep. #436) and combined with 
         seasonal differences
 !  [ES] running properties reworked
 !  [ES] integration reworked
 !  [ES] prune data reworked (including reps. #1140, #1342)
 !  [ES] convolution reworked (including #496, #954)
 !  [ES] correlation redone - now performed via Fourier transform
 !  [ES] sampling reworked
 !  [ES] "Cumulative properties" dialog
 !  [ES] positions of drawing objects can be defined in either
         viewport/frame/world cooridnates (including #1336)
 !  [ES] implemented rotation of drawing objects (rep. #1413)
 !  [ES] frame/pointer for text objects (including rep. #1109)
 !  [ES] implemented macro expansion in cstrings (for now, timestamp and
         filename) (including rep. #20)
 *  [ES] include filename when creating sets from block data (rep. #346)
 !  [ES] changed legend length/vgap/hgap params to be defined in the
         viewport coordinates
 !  [ES] no more world coordinates for the legend placement
 !  [ES] allow legend entries to contain a single symbol instead of two
 !  [ES] set filling in legends
 !  [ES] define legend frame placement via anchor point (in the frame
         coordinates) + justification and offset vector (including rep. #833)
 !  [ES] titles/subtitles are separate objects (thus solving rep. #1075)
 !  [ES] justification for annotated values (rep. #1382)
 !  [SJ] "minimum symbol separation" option for set presentation
 *  [AM/ES] X error handler. If X server crashes in the middle of a Grace
         session, your data will be saved
 *  [AG] netCDF: parse and use calibration attributes add_offset, scale_factor
         and understand 1 byte variables
 *  [RA] enabled inout tick direction be set separately for major and minor
         ticks
 !  [ES] implemented fontsize and linewidth scales per project
 !  [ES] got rid of world stacks
 *  [ES] hotlinks now work for all set types
 !  [ES] arrows now can be filled with different from the line color/pattern

  Interface

 !  [ES] all "Plot/* appearance" dialogs replaced with Tools/Explorer for easy
         project navigation and editing (including rep. #635, #1374, #1105)
 !  [EV/ES] instant update (rep. #861)
 !  [ES] removed "Geometric transformation" and "Digital filter" dialogs.
         The funcionality is trivially achieved using the generic "Evaluate
         expression" dialog
 !  [ES] removed "Regression" dialog. The functionality will be added to
         the "Non-linear fit" dialog
 !  [ES] get rid of the hotlink popup. The functionality is moved to the
         dataset spreadsheet editor
 !  [ES] color transformations and font rastering in device setup popup
 !  [ES] high/low/smart font AA
 !  [ES] added "Command" line functionality to Console. Got rid of the old
         "Commands" dialog + (rep. #1246)
 !  [ES] page zoom (including rep. #712)
 !  [ES] sync zoom of overlaid graphs (rep. #692)
 !  [ES] sym char in set presentation (rep. #1284)
 *  [ES] dropped the "-remove", "-timestamp", and "-rvideo" command line flags
 *  [ES] dropped the "-param" and "-pexec" command line flags
 *  [ES] dropped the "-batch" and "-pipe" command line flags
 *  [ES] fonttool enhancements: preserve cursor positions, be smart about font
         selection escape strings (rep. #1110)
 !  [ES] context-sensitive menu on canvas
 !  [ES] some enhancements to the built-in HTML viewer
 *  [ES] added -hdevice-options command line option
 *  [ES] enabled support for wheel mouse to scroll the canvas
 *  [ES/MO] enabled support for wheel mouse for spinboxes
 !  [ES] removed all page dimension settings from View/Page setup. Page
         dimensions are properties of Project, as it should be. Also,
         sync/rescale options removed
 *  [ES] removed grace_np library
 *  [ES] draw crosshair cursor not exceeding the current frame limits
 *  [ES] removed the "autoscale on set" button from the toolbar
 !  [KK/ES] new toolbar icons
 !  [ES] implemented moving of some plot objects with Ctrl+mouse dragging
 *  [ES] got rid of "Overlay graphs" dialog
 !  [ES] moved project desription and sformat UIs from "Save as" to Explorer
 !  [ES] moved Date settings from Preferences to the Project UI
 !  [ES] moved Locator UI to Graph UI
 

  Drivers

 *  [ES] the drivers' framework heavily reworked
 !  [ES] imeplemented color transformations per device (including rep. #690)
 *  [ES] all drivers have the "tight bbox" option (including rep. #714)
 *  [ES] implemented (optional) CMYK colorspace in the (E)PS output (rep. #928)
 *  [ES] implemented Grayscale/RGB/CMYK option in the PDF driver
 *  [ES] PDF-1.3/1.4/1.5 selection; default output PDF format is now 1.4
         (Acrobat5)
 *  [ES] implemented patterned fills in PDF
 *  [ES] fp precision in PDF is now selectable
 *  [ES] implemented kerning in PDF (when supported by PDFlib)
 *  [ES] BBox and resources at the top of PS output
 *  [ES] font embedding/subsetting in PS (rep. #927)
 *  [ES] PS output optimizations
 *  [ES] HiResBoundingBox in PS
 *  [ES] rewritten raster drivers to use the Xmi library instead of GD. This
         made the raster drivers full-featured: previously missing features -
         winding fillrule, patterned lines are implemented and many weird
         things fixed (including rep. #1275)
 *  [ES] per a popular demand, added "printable" option for EPS as a
         workaround for brain-damaged EPS importing software
 *  [ES] implemented page clipping in *PS

  Defaults

 *  [ES] gracerc no longer used
 *  [ES] default template is now Default.xgr
 *  [ES] removed allowDoubleClick Xresource
 *  [ES] changed default page size to A4

  Documentation

 *  [ES] install PDF versions of FAQ and User's Guide instead of DVI

  Portability/Compilation

 *  [RB] VMS updates
 *  [ES] dropped support for libhelp
 *  [ES] switched to autoconf-2.5 (rep. #1392)
 *  [ES] Xpm library is now a must for the GUI
 *  [ES] require PDFlib >= 6.0.0 for the PDF driver

  Bug fixes

 *  [ES] polygon regions were displayed incorrectly for non-linear scales
         (rep. #729)
 *  [ES] background fill exceeded postscript bounding box (rep. #992)
 *  [ES] fixed fonttool resizing (rep. #1168)
 *  [ES] fixed crash in PDF driver when using fonts lacking .afm files
         (rep. #1287)
 *  [ES] fixed precision of the dobject coordinates (rep. #1227)
 *  [ES] importing data from the command line doesn't set project name
         (rep. #1281)
 *  [ES] when a set was killed, the next set was often plotted black
         (rep. #1362)
 *  [ES] fixed font width calculation in the Xbae widget


 Legend:

    [EV]  - Ed Vigmond <vigmonde(at-nospam)IGB.UMontreal.CA>
    [AM]  - Alexander Mai <st002279(at-nospam)hrzpub.tu-darmstadt.de>
    [AG]  - Alexey Goldin <Alexey.Goldin(at-nospam)jpl.nasa.gov>
    [RB]  - Richard Brodie <R.Brodie(at-nospam)rl.ac.uk>
    [SJ]  - Steven G. Johnson <stevenj(at-nospam)deas.harvard.edu>
    [MO]  - Marius Olechnovicius <img(at-nospam)patikimi.lt>
    [RA]  - Robert Atwood <r.atwood(at-nospam)imperial.ac.uk>
    [KK]  - Karim Kaschani <karim.kaschani(at-nospam)arcormail.de>
    [ES]  - Evgeny Stambulchik <evgeny(at-nospam)stambulchik.net>

    "!" means no documentation provided (yet)
 
