This is part 1 of the NEWS file for PHPlot, with previous release documentation through Release 5.5.0 on 2011-07-30. For current news, see NEWS.txt. The project web site is https://github.com/AJRepo/PHPlot/ The project home page is https://github.com/AJRepo/PHPlot// Refer the the ChangeLog file for detailed source changes. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2011-07-30 Release 5.5.0 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. This release includes some bug fixes and new features. A significant new feature is the ability to embed a plot image inside an HTML file. Using this new feature, you can now write a single script which produces an HTML page with a PHPlot plot image, and avoid having to write separate scripts for the page and plot image. There is also a new 'bubbles' plot type. The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release. Cautions, Important Notes, and Compatibility Issues: Starting in this release, PHPlot more thoroughly checks data arrays for validity. Your data array must conform to the requirements in the PHPlot Reference Manual, including: the outer array must use only 0-based sequential integer indexes, the array values for rows must be arrays, and each row array must have a number of elements which is compatible with the data type and plot type. PHPlot will now produce an error image if given an invalid data array. In previous releases, PHPlot sometimes produced an error image, sometimes ignored the invalid entries, but most often it would produce PHP warnings or notices about invalid indexes or variable types. Read the notes and warnings in the PHPlot Reference Manual page documenting EncodeImage() before using the new 'data URL' feature for embedding PHPlot images in HTML files. Bugs Fixed in 5.5.0: #3312134 Allow missing points in OHLC plots: Like other plot types, the three OHLC plot types (ohlc, candlesticks, and candlesticks2) now allow missing points. Specify all 4 values in the array (open, high, low, close) as an empty string (for example) and that point will not be plotted. #3312064 PHP errors with invalid data arrays: See Compatibility Issues above. PHPlot now checks the data array more carefully and rejects invalid arrays without PHP warnings or notices. #3370548 Reverse legend line order for stackedbars: A new function SetLegendReverse() was added to control the order of text lines (and color boxes) in the legend: top-down (by default), or bottom-up. The bottom-up order is more appropriate for stackedbars and stackedarea plots, so the legend line order matches the plot. New features in 5.5.0: #3374495 Data URL encoding: A New function EncodeImage() was added. It returns the plot image as a string, with 3 available encodings: raw, base64, and dataurl. The dataurl encoding implements RFC2397 embedding of image data in a URL, and allows a single PHP script to produce an HTML page with the plot image embedded within. See the PHPlot Reference Manual for details and examples. Also, a new function SetFailureImage() was added. This allows you to prevent PHPlot from creating an image with an error message if a fatal error occurs. This is meant for use when EncodeImage (rather than PrintImage) will be used to produce the plot, but it may be useful in other cases too. #3352301 Bubble plots: A new plot type 'bubbles' was added, along with a new data type 'data-data-xyz' for use with this type. A bubble plot is a scatter-plot with a Z value at each point controlling the bubble diameter. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2011-05-27 Release 5.4.0 Overview This is the current stable release of PHPlot. This release includes some bug fixes and new features. New features include new legend positioning modes, legends using point shapes instead of color boxes, and the ability to 'anchor' tick marks at a specific value. PHPlot now includes a class constant containing the release version as PHPlot::version. The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release. Cautions, Important Notes, and Compatibility Issues: This release changes legend text positioning. Legend text is now vertically centered rather than bottom aligned. This can change the appearance of some plots, but the difference is usually not significant. See "Center vertical alignment for legend text" below. This release changes how stackedbars plots handle segments of size zero. This will change the appearance of some plots, especially if the axis is moved from 0. See "Undefined variables with stackedbars" below. Bugs Fixed in 5.4.0: #3292529 Legend doesn't use data color callback: This was determined to be the correct behavior, but undocumented. It has now been documented in the reference manual. #3294604 Center vertical alignment for legend text: Legend text lines are now centered vertically to the color boxes (or point shapes) rather than being bottom aligned. The difference is not noticeable with the default font size and line spacing, because there was no extra vertical space anyway. But with bigger fonts, and especially with additional line spacing, the text now looks better because of the center alignment. #3296884 Undefined variable with stackedbars: PHPlot will no longer report an undefined variable warning if a stackedbars plot starts with a stack containing all zero segments. (This was actually fixed in PHPlot-5.3.2.) Furthermore, PHPlot now handles zero segments in stackedbars plots differently. Zero values are no longer ignored. An initial zero segment will be drawn as a bar segment if the axis is moved in the opposite direction to the bar stack direction. A zero at the end will be drawn as a cap with the data color, if shading is on. New features in 5.4.0: #3303654 Force tick mark at specific value: New functions SetXTickAnchor() and SetYTickAnchor() were added. These tell PHPlot to adjust the first tick mark value so that the specified anchor position will coincide with a tick mark and grid position (or it would, if the data range were extended to include it). Documentation has been updated, including new examples. #3292825 Use point shape markers in legend box: New function SetLegendUseShapes() will enable use of point shapes in the legend, rather than color boxes. The default is color boxes, so existing plots will not change. This only works for points and linepoints plots. Documentation has been updated. #3291155 More flexible legend positioning: New function SetLegendPosition() allows new ways to position the legend: relative to the image, plot area, title, or using world coordinates, with an optional pixel offset. There is another new function GetLegendSize() to get the legend box size; this can be used to adjust the plot margins if you want the legend outside the plot area and inside the margins. Documentation has been updated. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2011-05-06 Release 5.3.2 Overview This is the current stable release of PHPlot. This release was produced to address a single bug (see below), using a branch off of PHPlot-5.3.1. (This is because the current development version, which will become PHPlot-5.4.0, already has half of a big two-part change to legend processing committed. So the bug fix was released without waiting for the new work to be completed.) Bugs Fixed in 5.3.2: #3296884 "Undefined variable with stackedbars": A temporary fix was made against phplot-5.3.1 to avoid an undefined variable error when the first stack in a stackedbars plot has all zero values. The fix avoids the error message, and the plots are OK in most cases. There are still issues with label position, and if the axis is moved. These will be addressed in a future fix. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2011-01-15 Release 5.3.1 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. This release focuses on providing better support and documentation for creating multiple plots on a single image. The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release. Some new material has been added, including a new section on multiple plots per image, and a new example of overlay plots. Bugs Fixed in 5.3.1: #3143586 "Multiple plots per image - fixes & docs": The reference manual now contains a section on multiple plots, and a new example. A bug was fixed with SetLegendWorld and multiple plots. Image border will now be drawn at most once. It is now possible to restore the default 'automatic' behavior for axis positioning. Other functions were changed to make arguments optional, so when called with no arguments they reset to the default. The reference manual has been updated with these changes too. #3147397 "Data colors missing with multiple plots": The fix for bug #3049726 "Optimize color allocation" caused a problem with multiple plots. This has been fixed. PHPlot will no longer truncate the data color table at each plot. It will still only allocate data colors as needed, but all of the pre-set or configured data colors will be available for each plot. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2010-12-04 Release 5.3.0 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. This release includes new plot types and some new features. The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release. Some of the sections have been moved, there are new examples for the new plot types, and a new section on tunable parameters has been added. New features in 5.3.0: #3093483 "Investing support chart types": Added 3 new plot types: Basic OHLC (Open/High/Low/Close), Candlesticks, and Filled Candlesticks. These are variations of plots that show the performance of a stock or other financial security. #3111166 "Control legend colorbox width": It is now possible to control the width of the color boxes in the legend, using a class variable which is documented in the manual. #3117873 "Data value labels in more plot types": Data value labels, which show the dependent variable values near the data points, are now available for more plot types: lines, linepoints, points, and squared. (These were previously available only for bars and stackedbars plots.) #3127005 "Ability to suppress X/Y axis lines": New functions SetDrawXAxis() and SetDrawYAxis() were added to control display of the X and Y axis lines. (These lines were probably the only PHPlot elements that could not be turned off.) In special cases, these can be used to produce a "bare" plot image. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2010-10-03 Release 5.2.0 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. This release includes some bug fixes and new features, described below, and a reimplementation of internal processing of colors. The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release. Horizontal plots are now documented in the manual, and the interim documentation in the source release (HorizontalBars.txt) has been removed. The manual is available in HTML format as a separate download from Sourceforge. The manual is also available for on-line viewing from the project home page. Starting with this release, the manual is also available in PDF format from the project home page. Cautions, Important Notes, and Compatibility Issues: Due to changes in color allocation (see bug #3049726 below), image files produced with PHPlot-5.2.0 will differ when compared byte-for-byte with those created by earlier releases, even when the images are identical (as they nearly always are). If you are creating a horizontal plot with any negative X values, and not setting the Y axis position, your plot will change (see bug #3074402 below) because PHPlot no longer leaves the Y axis on the left for horizontal plots. Some internal methods that used to have 'public' visibility are now protected. This will generally prevent you from using them. The list of changed functions can be found in the release ChangeLog. Avoid using any internal methods. If you are making a stackedbar plot with any negative values, PHPlot-5.1.3 and earlier took the absolute value of each data value (which was not documented), but PHPlot-5.2.0 does not. See Feature Request #3073679 below. If your plot fills the 256 available color map slots in a palette image, your image may look different with PHPlot-5.2.0 due to changes in color allocation order. This was seen on two of the tests in the PHPlot test suite. These tests tiled a JPEG image into the plot area or image background. Being a truecolor image, the JPEG had a huge number of colors, which filled all available slots in the color map. Additional colors for plot elements had to be approximated, and different colors resulted with PHPlot-5.2.0 versus previous releases. To avoid this problem, either use a truecolor PHPlot object (PHPlot_truecolor constructor), or reduce the number of colors in the background image and convert it to PNG or GIF. This release contains significant changes to PHPlot internals. In particular, variables and functions related to element colors and color handling have changed. Refer to the PHPlot release ChangeLog for more details. Remember, if you rely on accessing any member variable, or on using any non-public function or any function not documented in the reference section of the manual, your code is at risk of breaking with each new release. New features in 5.2.0: #3077554 "Finer control over plot element colors" (partial): The X, Y, and main titles can now have different colors. See the PHPlot Reference Manual entries for SetXTitleColor and SetYTitleColor. #3073679 "Stacked bar plots with negative values": A stacked bar plot can now include negative values, and stacks of negative values will be drawn downwards (or leftwards). See the PHPlot Reference Manual under "Plot Type: stackedbars" for details. Bugs Fixed in 5.2.0: #3045131 "SetTransparentColor problems": Setting a transparent color now works whether before or after setting the background color (for example), and also now works with a data color. #3049726 "Optimize color allocation" PHPlot now defers allocating colors until drawing time, and tries to allocate only the colors which are actually needed. For palette images, this results in use of fewer color slots and slightly smaller image files. #3074402 "Fix Y axis default for horizontal plots": When horizontal plots were introduced, an asymmetry with the X and Y axis position defaults was known but left. This behavior was later determined to be unhelpful. So now the Y axis on horizontal plots will default to X=0, or the X value closest to zero within the plot area range. This is the same behavior as for the X axis in vertical plots. #3056991 "Internal methods should be 'protected'": More of the internal PHPlot functions were changed to 'protected' visibility, as the test suite was fixed to not call them directly. #3057000 "Review 'deprecated' methods": One broken deprecated method (SetColor) was removed and one changed. Note that deprecated methods are not documented and not tested. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2010-08-30 Release 5.1.3 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. Additional horizontal plot types and features have been added, however horizontal plots are still considered 'experimental'. A new callback has been added which allows greater control over the data colors. An improved method for accessing TrueType Font (TTF) files means that on many systems TTF text can be used without specifying font paths. Cautions and Important Notes: Since the previous PHPlot release, PHP-5.3.3 and PHP-5.2.14 have been released, and these include a fix for the TrueType Font (TTF) rendering problem. Use of these releases is now recommended. There has been extensive cleanup of the PHPlot code. If you have a customized version of PHPlot, you may find it difficult to update. The "additional data support" script phplot_data.php has been removed from this release. The script has not been developed or tested in a long time, and was found to have numerous problems. The script can still be found in the CVS repository. The changes in this release (horizontal plots, custom data color callback, and TrueType Font handling) should not result in any compatibility issues. New features in 5.1.3: #3049703 "Additional horizontal plots and features": + Implemented data values labels in horizontal bar charts. Use: SetXDataLabelPos('plotin'). + Add horizontal stacked bar charts, with data value labels. + Add horizontal thinbarline plots. Horizontal plots are still considered 'experimental', and documentation is in the HorizontalBars.txt text file rather than the PHPlot Reference Manual. #3034164 "Extended control of data colors": New callback 'data_color' can be used to customize selection of the color of each bar, line segment, point marker, etc. This is documented in the PHPlot Reference Manual section "Custom Data Color Selection", with new examples in the Examples chapter. Bugs Fixed in 5.1.3: #3051906 "Better choice for default TT font": Rather than always using the unlikely 'benjamingothic.ttf' as its default TrueType font name, PHPlot now has a short list of sans-serif fonts, and tries to find one that works if a default TT font is needed. On many systems, this will provide a high-quality default font without help. #3051832 "Let PHP/GD find the font file": Instead of using file existence to validate a TT font file, PHPlot now just tries to use the font. This allows PHP/GD to use its own rules to try to find the font, without needing a pathname. This works on Windows and at least some Linux systems. #3048267 "phplot_data add-on is still broken" Not fixed. phplot_data.php has been removed from the release. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2010-06-29 Release 5.1.2 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. Truecolor image support is no longer considered 'experimental', and is now documented in the reference manual. There is a new experimental feature for horizontal bar charts. This release also contains a bug fix and new feature. Cautions and Important Notes: The advisory against using PHP-5.3.2 or PHP-5.2.13 with PHPlot if you use TrueType fonts (TTF) continues. See the item below for PHPlot-5.1.1. The good news is that this has been fixed by the PHP Team and will be in the next releases. Compatibility of data type and plot type are now checked completely. If you used an incorrect data type with certain plot types, your script may no longer work until you fix the data type. Specifically, the area, squared, and thinbarline plot types failed to check the data type they received, and treated anything other than 'data-data' as 'text-data'. If you have a squared plot with data type 'data-data-error', for example (which is not supposed to work), it did produce a plot, but will now result in an error. The addition of horizontal bar charts should not impact any existing plot, with one small exception. The function SetYDataLabelPos() used to accept some additional, undocumented options (plotleft, plotright, both, yaxis) and pass these through to SetYTickLabelPos() "for compatibility". It no longer does so, as some of those are now used for horizontal bar chart labels. To position Y tick labels, use only SetYTickLabelPos(). New features in 5.1.2: #3002606 "Add to plot and image border options": SetPlotBorderType() now accepts 'right', 'top', and 'bottom', as well as an array of options. So you can now control exactly which of the 4 border sides will be drawn. SetImageBorderType() now accepts 'solid' as a choice. This will use the actual color set with SetImageBorderColor(), rather than the darker shade as type 'plain' does (which may have been a bug). SetImageBorderWidth() is a new function that sets the width of the image border. The defaults are the same as the fixed values used before: 1 pixel for plain, 2 pixels for raised. The image border width is now accounted for in margin calculations, if it is greater than 2 (to make sure existing plots will not change). #2885930 "Horizontal Bars": Horizontal bar charts are implemented, as an experimental feature. 'Experimental' means they are not yet documented in the reference manual, and subject to change or removal. Refer to the text file HorizontalBars.txt for details. #2947679 (follow-up) "Support for alpha blending/Truecolor": Truecolor support is now documented in the Reference Manual. The interim documentation file Truecolor.txt has been removed. Alpha channel specification now works with both constructors and both image types. This fixes an issue if the base constructor was used with a truecolor background image. (In PHPlot-5.1.1, the result would be a truecolor image, but the alpha channel features were not available.) Bug Fixed in 5.1.2: #3010116 "Bad rendering of title in multi-plot image when using TTF": Make sure the main title is drawn only once, to avoid bad rendering of TTF titles with multiple plots due to anti-aliasing. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2010-04-04 Release 5.1.1 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. This release adds truecolor image support as an experimental feature, fixes a number of bugs and adds a few new features. The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release. The manual is available as a separate download from Sourceforge. The manual is also available for on-line viewing from the project home page. See the ChangeLog file in the release for more about changes and bug fixes. Cautions and Important Notes: Avoid using PHP-5.3.2 or PHP-5.2.13 with PHPlot if you use TrueType fonts (TTF). Some new bugs were introduced in those releases that adversely affects accurate positioning and rendering of TrueType font text. New features in 5.1.1: #2947679 "Support for alpha blending/Truecolor": PHPlot can now produce truecolor images, with alpha blending of colors and other effects. This is considered an experimental feature, meaning it is not yet documented in the PHPlot Reference Manual, and subject to change. Refer to the text file Truecolor.txt included in the PHPlot release for information on using truecolor. Two drawing changes were made to improve plot appearance with Truecolor: + Filled dots (in points & linepoints plots) are now drawn better. This also makes them look rounder with regular (non-Truecolor) plots. + Area plots have the areas filled without overlapping each area down to the Y axis. This was needed to fix problems with alpha blending, and should have no effect on non-Truecolor plots. #2973995 "Add y-Data to Stackedbars": You can now have Y Data Labels with 'stackedbars' plots. These label the Y values (incremental and total) for each bar. Refer to the reference manual page for SetYDataLabelPos(). Bug Fixes in 5.1.1: #2976735 "Improvements and fixes for 'area' plots": Moving X axis works; handle Y<0 better; new 'stackedarea' plot type is a variation on 'area' with the data represented differently. #2974639 "Stacked bars plot breaks with X axis != 0": Moving X axis works. #2963757 "point_counts undefined error in 5.1.0": Fixed an error introduced in PHPlot-5.1.0 when point size and shape arrays were set to the same size. #2938219 "Bars go in wrong direction": For bar charts with all Y<0, bars will still be drawn down even if Y=0 is not in range. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2009-12-24 Release 5.1.0 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. This release fixes a number of bugs and adds some new features. Some of the changes in this release can alter the appearance of plots, so be sure to review the information in this NEWS file and test this release with your application. The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release. The manual is available as a separate download from Sourceforge. The manual is also available for on-line viewing from the project home page. See the ChangeLog file in the release for more about changes and bug fixes. New features in 5.1.0: + A new "contrib" directory has been added for useful add-ons. This currently contains: * prune_labels : Control data label density on X axis. * color_range : Define a gradient map for data colors. + Feature Request 2899921 "Allow different format for data and tick labels" Text angle and format can now be controlled separately for data labels. + Locale loading override New variable locale_override stops PHPlot from getting locale from system. + Translating Coordinates New function GetDeviceXY() to translate world to device coordinates. + New drawing callback New callback 'draw_all', called after all drawing is done. The manual now contains an example of using this new callback and the new GetDeviceXY() function to annotate a plot. Bug Fixes in 5.1.0: #2914403 "Pie + X/Y titles: Undefined property error" X/Y titles are now properly ignored for pie charts. #2908256 "Error: array_sum() should be an array" (drupal) #2916864 "Should at least print legend on pie charts with empty data" Pie charts with invalid data (no Y values > 0) now make an empty plot. #2906436 "Fixes for X Tick Labels vs X Data Labels" Smarter determination of whether to do Tick labels, Data labels, or both. #2900914 "Problem with display of 0 on Y axis" Fixed rounding error that could produce something like Y=8.12345E-16. #2886365 "PHP 5 patch" (Declare all functions and variables in PHP5 style) Most internal PHPlot member functions now have "protected" visibility. #2839547 "SetImageBorderType('none') You can use SetImageBorderType('none') to turn the image border back off. #1795972 "Fix default point shapes" We now have 20 (vs 10) point shapes, with 10 (vs 1) used by default. #1795971 "Fix default data colors" We now have 16 (vs 8) default data colors, no duplicates, all visible. Visible Changes and Possible Incompatibilities: + PHP5 visibility changes (Bug #2886365) Details: Most internal PHPlot member functions now have visibility 'protected', rather than all being public. All member variables are still 'public'. Reason for the change: Use the recommended PHP5 syntax, better OO style. Compatibility: If you were calling a PHPlot internal function that got changed to 'protected', this will break. Please report this. + Fix default point shapes (Bug 1795972) Details: We now have 20 (vs 10) point shapes available, and by default we have 10 (vs 1) different shapes in use. The default size is now 6 pixels for all point shapes. Reason for the changes: Using different shapes helps distinguish the data sets. The existing 10 defined shapes were not enough, since some of them are not centered over the points, too small, or otherwise hard to see. The code to synchronize the point shape and size arrays was broken, and some dubious code to adjust sizes to even numbers needed to be fixed. Compatibility (1): If you have a points or linepoints plot with more than one dataset, and you did not use SetPointShapes() to configure the shapes, them your plot will change from using a diamond for all data sets to using different shapes for up to 10 data sets. Compatibility (2): Fixing the point size/point shape array size bug may slightly change the size of some shapes, but it now works the way it was documented and supposed to work. + Fix default data colors (Bug 1795971) Details: Defined a new set of 16 default data colors. The colors are different and contrast well against the default white background. The first 4 colors were not changed. Reason for the change: The default 8 data colors included two instances of orange, and one color which was invisible on a white background. Compatibility: Colors will change on any plot with more than 4 data sets where you did not use SetDataColors() to set your own data colors. + Re-used old function SetXDataLabelAngle() Details: SetXDataLabelAngle() now does something different. Reason for the change: This name was needed for a new function, to set the angle for the X Data Labels. The old use of this function was not documented, and marked "deprecated" in the code since around 2003-12-07. Compatibility: If you are still using SetXDataLabelAngle() to set both Tick and Data label angles, you need to use SetXLabelAngle() instead. + Separate controls for tick and data labels (Feature Request 2899921) Details: New functions SetXDataLabelAngle(), SetYDataLabelAngle(), SetXDataLabelType(), and SetYDataLabelType() to allow separate control over the angle and format of data labels, versus tick labels. Reason for the change: Allow Data Labels to use different formatting and angle compared to Tick Labels. Compatibility: The default behavior has been set up such that there should be no compatibility issues. For example: Old behavior: SetXLabelType() sets the type for both tick and data labels. New behavior: SetXLabelType() sets the type for tick labels and the default type for data labels. SetXDataLabelType() sets the type for data labels (overrides SetXLabelType). + X Tick Labels vs X Data Labels (Bug 2906436) Details: Regarding SetXTickLabelPos() and SetXDataLabelPos(): If only one of them is called, the behavior is unchanged (only that label type will be displayed). If both are called: Do exactly what was requested. If neither was called: display only data labels if any data labels are non-empty, else display only tick labels. Reason for the change: 1) Fix the long-standing problem behavior that by default PHPlot overlays tick and data labels below the X axis. 2) Fix order dependency between setting the position of tick and data labels. 3) Prepare for future extension of data labels, and allow both tick and data labels to be on if the programmer enables both. Compatibility: There are some cases where your plot will change. (a) Calls neither SetXDataLabelPos() nor SetXTickLabelPos(): Old behavior: Both tick and data labels displayed, possibly overlaid. New behavior: If there are any non-blank data labels, then show only the data labels, not the tick labels. Otherwise, show tick labels. (b) Calls both SetXDataLabelPos() and SetXTickLabelPos(), with other than 'none' for each position: Old behavior: The latter call was effective; earlier one ignored. New behavior: Independent of order, both calls are effective. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2009-06-14 Release 5.0.7 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. The release adds one new feature, fixes a few bugs, and changes the license under which PHPlot is released. The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release. The manual is available as a separate download from Sourceforge. The manual is also now available for on-line viewing at https://github.com/AJRepo/PHPlot/ See the ChangeLog file for more about changes and bug fixes. Licensing: PHPlot is now released on the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1. (Previous versions of PHPlot were released under a dual "PHP/GPL" license.) The licensing change was authorized by the original author and copyright holder of PHPlot. New feature in 5.0.7: + Plot area margins can now be partially specified, using either SetMarginsPixels or SetPlotAreaPixels. In previous releases of PHPlot you had to either specify all 4 margins or none. Credit to adoll for this feature. Visible Changes and Possible Incompatibilities: + Y data range can change: As a result of the bug fixes in this release, automatically-calculated Y data ranges can change. If you have missing Y values in your data, and you let PHPlot calculate the Y data range (that is, you do not call SetPlotAreaWorld with a Ymin value), then the lower limit for Y can change. If you have a plot with data-data-error data type, different error values for different points, and let PHPlot calculate the Y data range, then either Y limit can change. Bug Fixes in 5.0.7: + Fix for bug 2803900: SetRGBArray('large') does not work: Corrected an array name usage problem. You can now select the large color map. Also PHPlot no longer overrides use of the PHP include path when loading the large color map, and now reports an error if the file is needed and not found. + Fix for bug 2791502 "Error plots treat missing Y values as 0": Missing Y values now with with data-data-error plots. + Fix for bug 2792860 "Wrong DataLabelLines with missing Y": Data label lines are now suppressed at missing Y values. + Fix for bug 2786350 "Missing Y data results in bad auto-range": Missing Y values are now ignored when calculating the Y data range. Bug report and analysis by mrten. + Fix for bug 2786354 "Incorrect auto-range for data-data-error": The Y data range is now correctly calculated for data-data-error plots when the error values differ from point to point. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2009-01-20 Release 5.0.6 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. The purpose of this release is to fix additional problems with text spacing and positioning, and introduce some minor new features. The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release. The manual is available as a separate download from Sourceforge. The manual is also now available for on-line viewing at https://github.com/AJRepo/PHPlot/ New features in 5.0.6: + Allow mixing GD and TrueType font text on the same plot You can use the new method functions SetFontGD() and SetFontTTF() to select a font and font type for text element (labels, titles, etc.) For example, you can have TrueType plot titles, and GD-fixed font labels. SetUseTTF() now sets the default text type, TTF or GD. This is fully backward compatible. + Extended label formatting See the reference manual for more information on these. New label formatting types are added: 'printf' (using a user-defined format), and 'custom' (using a callback function). For 'data' type formatting, a prefix and suffix can be added. (PHPlot previously had an undocumented suffix for 'data' type, which still works.) For 'time' formatting, the format can now be specified in the same function call rather than using SetXTimeFormat and SetYTimeFormat. For 'data' formatting, the precision can now be specified in the same function call, rather than using SetPrecisionX and SetPrecisionY. + Better control over line spacing in multi-line labels Line spacing can now be set separately for each text element using an additional argument to SetFont, SetFontGD, and SetFontTTF. The overall SetLineSpacing() value is the default for each text element that does not have a specific line spacing set. PHPlot now interprets the value set for line spacing as the number of pixels only for GD text. For TrueType text, it is a scale factor for the font's built-in line spacing for TrueType text. The equation used is: interline_spacing = line_spacing * font_natural_spacing / 6 where line_spacing is either the global value set with SetLineSpacing or a more specific value set with SetFont(), and font_natural_spacing is the amount of space between lines built-in to the TrueType font. The factor 6 should really be 4 (since PHPlot always used 4 as the default line_spacing, this would give the natural font spacing by default). But the text is too widely spaced with this value, and 6 was chosen to be more compatible for typical font sizes. Visible Changes and Possible Incompatibilities: + Line spacing Multi-line TrueType titles and labels will have different inter-line spacing. Since the text size affects the margin and plot area sizes, this results in slightly different sized features on any plot with multi-line TrueType text. Previous versions of PHPlot used a default 4 pixels for inter-line spacing of multi-line TrueType text, regardless of the font size. PHPlot now uses the 'natural' font inter-line spacing, adjusted by a line spacing parameter (per text type, with a global default). The same change can also increase the size of the legend box slightly. + Internal changes were made to the way font information is stored. Anything that directly references PHPlot internals regarding fonts will break. Usage also changed for the internal functions to size and draw text (ProcessText*, SizeText*) due to font data storage changes. + Changes were made to internal class variables used to store label formatting information. Anything relying on these internals may break. Bug Fixes in 5.0.6: #1932571: Data-Data Plot fails with same X values PHPlot will no longer hang if all X values are the same. But this is interim fix to force the X range to 1 to prevent the hang. Eventually, smarter automatic range code will handle this better. Credit to andyl for finding this. #1891636: Misaligned TTF X Labels PHPlot will now correctly line-up TrueType labels along the X axis. There were small but very noticeable errors before, when the text had descenders or lines with all short letters. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2008-01-13 Released 5.0.5 Overview: This is the current stable release of PHPlot. The emphasis of this release is to improve text positioning, margin calculation, and error handling. Although this is considered a stable release, it has a large amount of changed code compared to the previous release 5.0.4. Two of the more complex components of PHPlot - text and margin calculations - were mostly re-written in this release. You are advised to carefully test your own applications with PHPlot-5.0.5 to see how your plots look. Refer to the README.txt file included in the release for information on reporting problems. Starting with this release, PHPlot no longer supports PHP4, since the PHP group officially declared end-of-life for PHP4 as of 31 December 2007. PHPlot-5.0.5 was tested only with PHP-5.2.5 and we are unlikely to address any issues using PHPlot with older versions of PHP. The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release. The manual is available as a separate download from Sourceforge. The manual is now also now available for on-line viewing at https://github.com/AJRepo/PHPlot/ The callback feature added in 5.0.4 is now documented in the reference manual. It is still considered experimental and subject to change, however. Visible Changes and Possible Incompatibilities: + Dropped support for PHP4. + Eliminated remaining order-dependent behavior related to margins and text. PHPlot should now do nothing at all, except record parameters, until you draw the graph with DrawGraph. I believe this was always the intended behavior of PHPlot, but over time perhaps various pre-calculations and dependencies crept in. Fixing this simplifies processing and should lead to more consistent behavior. + The rewritten margin calculation code now uses actual sizes of all tick and data labels and tick marks, rather than guesses. Margins collapse to remove unused elements, but a minimum margin (currently fixed at 15 pixels) is applied so the plot edges don't get to close to the image edges. The result is that most graphs with auto-calculated margins will change in appearance. It most cases, the margins get slightly smaller. In other cases, earlier releases mis-calculated the margins, so this release will produce much neater margins. + The X and Y titles are now offset out from the plot area, not in from the image area. For auto-calculated margins this should not make any difference, but if you use SetMarginsPixels or SetPlotAreaPixels to set larger margins, the axis titles will move in closer to the plot with this release. + Changes were made to PHPlot internals, including removal of some class variables and functions, and addition of new variables and functions. These are documented in the ChangeLog. Relying on any internal variables or functions in an application using PHPlot is unwise. The following internal functions were removed: SetImageArea() DrawDotSeries() DrawLineSeries() CalcXHeights() CalcYWidths() DrawLabels() InitImage() DrawDashedLine() These were marked 'deprecated', were undocumented and unmaintained. TTFBBoxSize() This was replaced with SizeText(). + Line spacing set with SetLineSpacing() now affects TTF text as well as GD text. Previously, it only affected GD text. The default line spacing happens to be usable for TTF text. + Changes were made to error handling. PHPlot will now trigger a user-level error after producing an error image, instead of exiting. If no error handler has been set, it will exit, as before. But now the error message should also get logged, or written to the standard error stream, depending on the SAPI in use. You can now establish an error handler to catch most PHPlot errors and do some cleanup before exit. + PHPlot no longer accepts some invalid option values (such as a substring of a valid value, or empty strings) passed to functions. If your application aborts in CheckOption with PHPlot-5.0.5 but 'worked' with previous releases, them you were probably using an invalid option value. Bug Fixes in 5.0.5: #945439: x_tick_label_height not set correctly Exact sizes of labels are now used to calculate margins. #1813070: Bad position for multi-line TrueType text Fixed as part of text functions rewrite. Use correct basepoint (lower left of each line) when positioning text lines. #1813071: Wrong title height for multi-line TTF text Fixed as part of text functions rewrite: calculate height of multi-line text correctly. Also now uses the line-spacing setting. #1813474: DrawText alignment arguments wrong Fixed so 'top' and 'bottom' now have the usual meaning: top means align top of text with reference, bottom means align bottom of text. This was switched before. Changed every internal caller to compensate. #1816844: Fix order dependency for setting titles Defer processing of title strings until DrawGraph(), so it doesn't matter if fonts, etc. are set before or after. #1819668: Horiz. align multi-line text: GD vs TTF The text functions were rewritten to draw TTF text line-by-line, like GD text, and correctly align each line. #1823774: Default Font Path and Error Message Error handling has been improved to make sure a message is logged, in addition to the error image, and use error_trigger rather than exit. #1826513: FIXME in DrawLegend: Max label length The actual size needed for legend text is now used. #1827263: Spoiled up pie-chart if $val is close to zero Fixed by skipping over any segment that rounds to 0 degrees of arc. (The GD function uses integer angles only, and 0 degrees means draw a complete circle.) #1836528: Insufficient checking of parameter values Rewrote validator function to reject improper parameter values. #1843012: Make margins, drawing consistent Margin code logic was rewritten and checked for consistency. #1856207: Margin error with 'xaxis'/'yaxis' position Margin space is now allocated for ticks and labels if their position is 'xaxis' or 'yaxis' and the axis is at the plot edge. This is not a perfect fix (the axis could be close but not at the edge). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2007-10-20 Released 5.0.4 Overview: This is the latest stable release of PHPlot. We are abandoning the 'rc' version naming style, because we don't consider these last releases 'release candidate' versions. As we continue to make changes to PHPlot, we are not converging toward a final "5.0" release, however we do consider these releases stable and complete enough for production use. This release fixes a number of problems and introduces a few new features. The PHPlot reference manual has also been updated to match this release. New material has been added documenting some of the PHPlot internals. The manual is available as a separate download from Sourceforge. Code Cleanup: Some code cleanup is going in to this release. It is hoped that these changes will not impact any existing scripts using PHPlot, but will make the PHPlot code itself easier to understand and maintain. PHPlot now avoids making changes outside its own class definition. There are no longer any functions defined outside the class, nor any constants. Three constants (MINY MAXY TOTY) were removed, and 2 functions were removed (see Visible Changes below). Also PHPlot no longer sets the PHP error reporting level to E_ALL. Although we highly recommend setting error reporting to E_ALL in your php.ini file or scripts, it is not right for PHPlot to assume that you want it. Visible Changes and Possible Incompatibilities: Arrays containing color and style information are used with several PHPlot functions to control the plot style array. These functions are: SetPointShapes, SetPointSizes, SetLineWidths, SetLineStyles, SetDataColors, SetDataBorderColors, and SetErrorBarColors. The arrays passed to these functions MUST used sequential integer 0-based indexes. This is what the PHP manual calls "Usual integer indices (starting from zero, increasing by one)". This is the type of array you get in PHP by default if you use array() without specifying key values, or use the empty-bracket assignment operator to add values onto an array. In previous versions of PHPlot, some of these functions would also work with string-indexed or non-sequentially-indexed arrays, but this was not clearly defined. Starting with PHPlot-5.0.4, only arrays with "usual integer indices" work, and other array indexes will cause errors. Some internal-use-only functions have had their usage changed or been removed. If you are using functions that are not documented in the PHPlot Function Reference in the manual, your code may have to be changed. As part of the code cleanup, two functions which were defined outside the PHPlot class were removed: array_pad_array(), and array_merge_php4(). If your code used these, you need to fix your code. The routines which accept a color name, value, or array now check for a valid color name. If you specify a color name which is not in your current color table, PHPlot will draw an error and exit. Previously, PHP would report an index error, continue, and get a 'headers already sent' message. Bug Fixes in 5.0.4: #1813021: Miss-positioned right-justified vertical GD text. Fixed DrawText() to correctly position 90 degree right-justified text drawn in a fixed GD font. This could be seen with 90 degree Y tick labels. #1790441 Removed destructor/shutdown function, and no longer recommend using reference assignment when creating a PHPlot object. This was interfering with memory usage. Credit to annajilly for analysis. #1779115 SetLegendWorld() failed because of undefined variables. The required order dependency was too hard to meet. This is now fixed. You can now use SetLegendWorld anywhere before DrawGraph. #1726810 (feature request, but actually a bug fix) Ignore empty strings as data labels when doing time or data label formatting. These would previously produce errors or bad formatting. Now you can omit labels as needed even with time and data formatting. Credit to exgerhardr for finding this. #1605555 Y data labels used wrong font and not formatted (bar charts only). #1208054 Localization of number formatting in 'data' format type. PHPlot will attempt to format the numbers in a way appropriate to your locale. You can also force the formatting with the new function SetNumberFormat. Credit to David Hernández Sanz. #937944 X/Y Tick counts: PHPlot could draw one two few Y tick counts, and one too many X tick counts. This is not a perfect fix, and more work is needed here, but this fixes an error case in both X and Y values. New Features in 5.0.4: New function SetLegendStyle allows control of the alignment of text and color boxes within the legend. Also allows removing the color boxes. Based on bug #1208054. Credit to David Hernández Sanz. New function SetNumberFormat. See bug report #1208054 above. Callbacks are added. PHPlot can call back your functions while generating the plot. This is experimental, and documented only in the file "Callbacks". Credit to annajilly for the idea and design. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2006-11-13 Released 5.0rc3 Overview: This is an interim release. It has been a long time since the previous release 5.0rc2, and there have been a lot of changes. There are still more changes likely to go in before we have "5.0", but there are enough for now. The PHPlot Reference Manual has also been released, and is available as a separate download from Sourceforge. PHPlot users and developers are strongly encouraged to read the manual. This release does not include the "doc/" and "examples/" directories of previous releases. The Reference Manual contains more complete and up-to-date information and examples, and I am unable to maintain the doc/ and examples/ files while also maintaining the Reference Manual. If you need those files, they can be accessed with the Sourceforge web CVS browser. New Features: The emphasis for this release is bug fixing, so there are few new features. + You can now suppress lines or points on individual plots in a linepoints graph. This feature was added because I needed a graph with several linepoints lines, but also with a solid line showing an "80% goal". Use SetPointShapes with the value 'none' in the array to suppress the point markers for that plot (and only draw the line). Use SetLineStyles with the value 'none' in the array to suppress the line for that plot (and only draw the point markers). [Bug # 1594458] + Bar charts can have data labels above the bar with the value. Turn these on with SetYDataLabelPos('plotin'). This is somewhat experimental, since there isn't a lot of room for labels on top of the bars and you may find the results are not useful. Visible Changes: Here are the more significant changes in this release. These are changes which may affect existing scripts and output from PHPlot. See the ChangeLog file for information about all changes and bug fixes. + A bug fix on bar chart bar borders results in black borders around the bars if shading is turned off. The border was previously covered up, but was supposed to be there. If you need borderless, unshaded bars, you need to use SetDataBorderColors to make the borders the same colors as the bars. [Bug # 1096197] + TrueType font pathname handling was fixed. You no longer need to use SetUseTTF(True). You can either use full paths to the font files with SetDefaultTTFont() and SetFont(), or you can call SetTTFPath() to point to a directory of font files, and then use simple font filenames without paths in SetDefaultTTFont() and SetFont(). [Bug # 1144644 plus several others] + There have been several fixes regarding automatically calculated ranges and scales. The result is that you may see less extra space and fewer tick marks in some cases. + A fix was made to bar and stackedbar graph bar widths in order to get the X axis labels to properly center. As part of the fix, the bar widths now match between the two graph types. (Before this fix, the bars were narrower in bar graphs compared to the same data plotted as a stacked bar.) As a result, bar graph bars will now be drawn with wider bars, and stackedbar graph bars will be narrower. You can adjust this with the new class variable bar_extra_space. [Bug # 1437912] + Dot shapes and sizes were off by 1 or 2 slots in the array of shapes or sizes. After the fix, you may get different dot shapes or sizes per plot line. [Bug # 1096194] Testing: Since its output is visual (graphics), and it has so many interconnected modes and options, PHPlot is difficult to test. But at least we are now trying. I have a collection of PHPlot scripts (currently about 60) and a script to run through them. The script automatically checks that: 1) Nothing was written to the standard error stream; 2) An image file of size greater than 0 was written; 3) Neither the test script nor PHPlot did exit(). This catches cases where PHPlot aborts with DrawError(). The automated test is an easy way to check for serious regression, but you really need to inspect the output files to validate PHPlot. This takes a little time, and it is easy to overlook problems. The real issue is test coverage. Just as we can be sure that future PHPlot releases will pass the test collection, we can also be sure that future bug reports will be written against untested cases. -------------------- 2006-11-08 PHPlot on Sourceforge has a new maintainer: lbayuk -------------------- 2004-10-24 Released 5.0rc2 --------------------