[Kst] Kst 2.0.7 released!

Wed Jul 17 21:12:56 UTC 2013

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Kst 2.0.7 released July 17th 2013

The Kst team is happy to announce the immediate availability of version 2.0.7 of the Kst plotting tool. This version contains some bugfixes and a few new features compared with 2.0.6.
Packages for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X are available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/kst/files/Kst%202.0.7/, as well as the complete source code and cmake-based build files.
Some Linux distributions also provide packages in their own or add-on repositories, updates should appear in the next days.

Kst is characterized by the following features:
- Outstanding performance: curves with millions of points are no problem at all!
- Plotting of live streams
- Out-of-the box support for a variety of formats (currently ASCII, netCDF, dirfile, Matlab's .mat, QImage-supported types, FITS images)
- User-friendly with a modern and consistent user interface
- A set of unique tools to boost efficiency, including a fantastic data import wizard , capacity to edit multiple objects at once or the "Change Data File" tool to compare multiple experiments easily
- Extensive batch mode and python scripting under Linux
- An active community
- Easily expandable for new data formats or data analysis algorithms thanks to a plugin-based architecture
- Available on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX

A more detailed presentation of Kst can be found on the web page at http://kst-plot.kde.org, including numerous screenshots and all the useful download links.

The most notable improvements brought by Kst 2.0.7 over the 2.0.6 version released in July 2012 are listed below:

1) ASCII source
- ASCII options revisited to include extensive support for time vectors
- Automatic formatting of X axis time display from the datawizard when reading string-formatted time
- Completely overhauled config dialog
- More speed for files with very many columns
- Extensive file buffer work to support reading big ASCII files in chunks and optionally with threads (making it possible to use files >2GB on 32 bit Windows and bringing a 2 or 3 times speedup on multicore architectures)

2) Misc. improvements
- Scripting: major rework adding support for histograms, spectrums and plugins (all fit plugins + some filter plugins added) + documentation update. Unfortunately working only under Linux at the moment
- Improve naming of exported graphics by using the tab's name as suffix
- New Cumulative Average plugin
- Enable renaming of plugins
- If an equation has a manual name, use that as the top label, rather than the equation itself
- Scroll wheel respects tied zoom
- Improve formatting of many dialogs
- Actions to copy parts of the window status bar into the clipboard: X copies the X coordinate, Y the Y coordinate and Ctrl + C copies the window status message
- Drawing points: separate point size
- Line widths now scale with window size
- Allow the x and y plot labels to be changed from the command line
- Automatic "unpacking" of netCDF vectors of type ncShort if they have scale_factor and add_offset attributes, as per the convention described in: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/netcdf/Attribute-Conventions.html
- In tied zoom mode, X only and Y only cursor extension lines appear in all tied windows
- Website updates (more coming, especially video tutorials)

3) Bug fixes
- Fix a bug where if you drag a plot to a new tab, it wasn't picked up by future autoformat actions nor listed in plot lists
- Cumulative sum plugin now returns a vector of the same size as the input vector
- Fix toggling tied zoom
- Fix printing to PDF under Windows
- Fix purge so ancestors of ancestors of curves used in plots don't get purged, and so that scalars/vectors used in labels (and their ancestors) don't get purged.
- Save/reload "automatically scale number axis" setting in plots.
- Fix regression in which re-scaling font sizes when adding plots didn't work.
- Fix gaussian + Lorentzian fits so that they actually fit
- Respect dialog defaults and curve properties for point density.
- Make relative file paths work regardless of where kst2 is called from
- Restore proper behavior of font scaling when adding plots to tabs

4) Build system
- Cleanups and preparations for a switch to git, which is probably going to happen just after the release of 2.0.7
- Automatic binary snapshots from svn available from http://syntheticpp.github.io/kstbinary/
- Qt5 compatibility
- Initial work to enable support for Kst on other platforms (Android/QNX)

A comprehensive changelog between 2.0.6 and 2.0.7 can be found here: http://kst-plot.kde.org/files/Log_messages_2.0.6_to_2.0.7.txt

We hope you will enjoy this version. Don't hesitate to promote it among your friends and colleagues, and let us know your wishes for future releases.

The Kst Team
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