[SciPy-User] ANN: Veusz 1.11 - a Python scientific plotting package and module

[Jeremy Sanders]

Veusz 1.11
----------
Velvet Ember Under Sky Zenith
-----------------------------
http://home.gna.org/veusz/

Copyright (C) 2003-2011 Jeremy Sanders <jeremy at jeremysanders.net>
and contributors.

Licenced under the GPL (version 2 or greater).

Veusz is a Qt4 based scientific plotting package. It is written in
Python, using PyQt4 for display and user-interfaces, and numpy for
handling the numeric data. Veusz is designed to produce
publication-ready Postscript/PDF/SVG output. The user interface aims
to be simple, consistent and powerful.

Veusz provides a GUI, command line, embedding and scripting interface
(based on Python) 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 1.11:
 * New data point picker for finding coordinates of points on plot
   (contributed by B.K. Stuhl)
 * New data navigator window for filtering, sorting and examining
   dataset statistics
 * ".." button next to dataset settings pops up data navigator for
   choosing datasets
 * Data fitting can now use PyMinuit, giving error estimates
   (B.K. Stuhl)
 * Console history now uses currently entered characters to select
   lines from history (B.K. Stuhl)
 * New self test script, comparing graph output with expected output
 * Put superscripts and subscripts above each other when
   formatting (B.K. Stuhl)
 * Key entries can have multiple lines (using \\) (B.K. Stuhl)
 * Option to treat blanks as data items in CSV files
 * Locale support added for number formatting
    - Can use current locale or US/English in documents
    - Can use US/English or current local in user interface

 * Linux binaries are now created on a more modern system
 * Windows binaries now use MSVC for compilation

Bug fixes:
 * CSV import with blank columns fixed
 * Embedding module now working when using binary
 * Remember current directory with unicode characters
 * Extension module now compiles under MSVC in Windows
 * Output is always appended to console (B.K. Stuhl)
 * \r characters sometimes break data import in Windows
 * If using --export option, add directory of script to import path

Minor bug fixes:
 * Zero sized dataset contour plot fix
 * Fix problem on context menu for axis match setting
 * Small values on log axis fix
 * Disable data edit dialog context menu when no datasets
 * Loading files with unicode filenames on command line
 * Do not allow non finite float settings

Features of package:
 * 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
 * Plotting dates
 * Fitting functions to data
 * Stacked plots and arrays of plots
 * Plot keys
 * Plot labels
 * Shapes and arrows on plots
 * LaTeX-like formatting for text
 * EPS/PDF/PNG/SVG/EMF export
 * Scripting interface
 * Dataset creation/manipulation
 * Embed Veusz within other programs
 * Text, CSV, FITS and user-plugin importing
 * Data can be captured from external sources
 * 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
 * Data picker

Requirements for source install:
 Python (2.4 or greater required)
   http://www.python.org/
 Qt >= 4.3 (free edition)
   http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/  
 PyQt >= 4.3 (SIP is required to be installed first)
   http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt/
   http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/sip/
 numpy >= 1.0
   http://numpy.scipy.org/

Optional:
 Microsoft Core Fonts (recommended for nice output)
   http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
 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
   

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:

 * Some recent versions of PyQt/SIP will causes crashes when exporting
   SVG files. Update to 4.7.4 (if released) or a recent snapshot to
   solve this problem.

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.