[SciPy-User] ANN: Veusz 1.18

[Jeremy Sanders]

Veusz 1.18
----------
http://home.gna.org/veusz/

Veusz is a scientific plotting package.  It is designed to produce
publication-ready Postscript/PDF/SVG output. Graphs are built-up by
combining plotting widgets. The user interface aims to be simple,
consistent and powerful.

Veusz provides GUI, Python module, command line, scripting, DBUS and
SAMP interfaces to its plotting facilities. It also allows for
manipulation and editing of datasets. Data can be captured from
external sources such as Internet sockets or other programs.

Changes in 1.18:
 * Add support for dataset expressions when plotting
 * Add axis-function widget for plotting axes which have a scale given
   by a function, or are linked to a different axis via a function
 * Add stepped colour maps
 * Support editing multiple datasets simultaneously in editor
 * Add setting to fix aspect-ratio of graphs
 * Add 'vcentre' line step mode for vertical step plots
 * Add internal margin setting for grids to separate sub-plots
 * Add pixel, pixel_wcs, fraction and linear_wcs FITS import
   coordinate system modes
 * Add drop down toolbar button menu to create axis widgets
 * More efficient widget dependency resolution

Bug fixes:
 * Fix reversed 'broken'-axes
 * Do not always draw axes above other widgets (fixes problem with key
   below axis)
 * Fix use of transparency image when plotting non-square images
 * Allow lists passed as xrange and yrange to create 2D dataset
 * Fix FieldBool positioning for plugins
 * QDP import: fix "no" values when used mixed with numbers
 * Remove warning of log images with zeros
 * For embedded mode, always return string for __repr__
 * Workaround for windows appearing behind for Mac OS X
 * Improve property spacing on Mac OS X

Features of package:
 Plotting features:
  * X-Y plots (with errorbars)
  * Line and function plots
  * Contour plots
  * Images (with colour mappings and colorbars)
  * Stepped plots (for histograms)
  * Bar graphs
  * Vector field plots
  * Box plots
  * Polar plots
  * Ternary plots
  * Plotting dates
  * Fitting functions to data
  * Stacked plots and arrays of plots
  * Nested plots
  * Plot keys
  * Plot labels
  * Shapes and arrows on plots
  * LaTeX-like formatting for text
  * Multiple axes
  * Axes with steps in axis scale (broken axes)
  * Axis scales using functional forms
  * Plotting functions of datasets
 Input and output:
  * EPS/PDF/PNG/SVG/EMF export
  * Dataset creation/manipulation
  * Embed Veusz within other programs
  * Text, CSV, FITS, NPY/NPZ, QDP, binary and user-plugin importing
  * Data can be captured from external sources
 Extending:
  * Use as a Python module
  * User defined functions, constants and can import external Python 
functions
  * Plugin interface to allow user to write or load code to
     - import data using new formats
     - make new datasets, optionally linked to existing datasets
     - arbitrarily manipulate the document
  * Scripting interface
  * Control with DBUS and SAMP
 Other features:
  * Data picker
  * Interactive tutorial
  * Multithreaded rendering

Requirements for source install:
 Python 2.x (2.6 or greater required)
   http://www.python.org/
 Qt >= 4.4 (free edition)
   http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/
 PyQt >= 4.5 (SIP is required to be installed first)
   http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/
   http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/sip/
 numpy >= 1.0
   http://numpy.scipy.org/

Optional:
 PyFITS >= 1.1 (optional for FITS import)
   http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyfits
 pyemf >= 2.0.0 (optional for EMF export)
   http://pyemf.sourceforge.net/
 PyMinuit >= 1.1.2 (optional improved fitting)
   http://code.google.com/p/pyminuit/
 For EMF and better SVG export, PyQt >= 4.6 or better is
   required, to fix a bug in the C++ wrapping
 dbus-python, for dbus interface
   http://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-python/
 astropy (optional for VO table import)
   http://www.astropy.org/
 SAMPy (optional for SAMP support)
   http://pypi.python.org/pypi/sampy/

Veusz is Copyright (C) 2003-2013 Jeremy Sanders
<jeremy at jeremysanders.net> and contributors. It is licenced under the
GPL (version 2 or greater).

For documentation on using Veusz, see the "Documents" directory. The
manual is in PDF, HTML and text format (generated from docbook). The
examples are also useful documentation. Please also see and contribute
to the Veusz wiki: http://barmag.net/veusz-wiki/

Issues with the current version:

  * Due to a bug in the Qt XML processing, some MathML elements
    containing purely white space (e.g. thin space) will give an error.

If you enjoy using Veusz, we would love to hear from you. Please join
the mailing lists at

https://gna.org/mail/?group=veusz

to discuss new features or if you'd like to contribute code. The
latest code can always be found in the Git repository
at https://github.com/jeremysanders/veusz.git.