News

3-February-2010

The Dislin distributions for Compaq (dl_10_df.zip) and Intel Visual Fortran (dl_10_if.zip) are updated since a call to the routine PDFMRK caused a linking error. Thanks to Joseph K. Mulcahey for the hint. Other Dislin distributions are not affected.

19-Januar-2010

A problem with the longer version number 10.0 is corrected in the routine PAGHDR. Thanks to Te-Pu Chiang for the hint.

15-Januar-2010

• A printed book of Dislin is now available. It can be ordered from Amazon.de, or directly from the author. The book describes the current version 10 of Dislin.

The Data Plotting Software DISLIN - Version 10 by Helmut Michels (Author) Paperback : 320 pages Publisher: Shaker Media GmbH; Edition 1: (Jan. 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 3868585176 ISBN-13: 978-3868585179 Product Dimension: 17 x 24 cm Price: 22,90 Euro + shipping

• The last Dislin upgrades 9.5 A to 9.5 D are combined to the new Dislin release 10.0 without adding new features, except for the routine STMTRI that plots streamlines from triangulated data. The HTML documentation of Dislin is updated to version 10.0.

10-November-2009

The following changes are applied to the Dislin upgrade 9.5 D:

• LICPTS is a new routine for calculating a Line Integral Convolution (LIC) image of a vector field. Some algorithm parameters can be modified with the new routine LICMOD and with the already existing routines STMOPT and STMVAL.
• The routine TXTURE generates a texture image of random numbers that can be passed to the routine LICPTS as texture image.
• The new routine CRVQDR plots a coloured surface from quadrangles similar to CRVTRI that plots triangles. A smooth surface can be selected with the routine SHDMOD.
• CRVT3D plots a curve in 3-D like CURV3D, but can show different thicknesses and colours at curve segments.
• The new routine IMGTPR defines a transparency colour for images that are plotted by routines such as WPIXLS, WPXROW and INCFIL. Pixels with the transparency colour will not be copied to the output format.
• MRKCLR defines the colour of symbols plotted by CURVE. The option is useful if symbols and lines are plotted by CURVE. The colour defined by MRKCLR will also be displayed in legends.
• The routines ZBFMOD and DBFMOD can disable the Z-buffer and depth sort in Dislin.
• Version 2.0 of the GSHHS shorelines managed by Paul Wessel is now supported by Dislin.

Gallery.

8-October-2009

Dislin is upgraded to version 9.5 C with the following changes:

• STREAM is a new routine for plotting streamlines of vector fields on regular grids. A set of starting points can be passed to STREAM. If no starting points are specified, the routine plots evenly-spaced streamlines through a given vector field.
• Several streamline options such as the integration method or additional arrow symbols can be defined with the routines STMMOD, STMOPT and STMVAL.
• STREAM3D is an analog routine to STREAM for plotting streamlines in space.
• The routines STMPTS and STMPTS3D calculate just a streamline for a starting point and returns the streamline in an array.
• The new routines VECMAT and VECMAT3D plot vector fields on regular grids. The vectors are displayed as arrows.
• The 64-bit distribution of Dislin for Mac OSX / Darwin is tested successfully on Mac OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Pre-compiled 64-bit modules for Perl 5.10, Python 2.6 and Java 1.6 are added to this distribution.
• A reported bug in the routine SENDOK for Linux/Unix is corrected. Thanks to Jim Phelps for the hint.

Gallery.

3-September-2009

The Dislin libraries in the distribution dl_95_pf.zip for PGI Visual Fortran are recompiled because of a mistake in the compilation process. Thanks to Te-Pu Chiang for the hint.

27-August-2009

Dislin is upgraded to version 9.5 B with the following changes:

• Hardware features are now used for thick lines enabled with LINWID and PENWID for screen and WMF output to increase the quality of plots. This behaviour can be disabled with the routine HWMODE.
• 2-D pie charts can be rotated with the new routine PIEROT. This may solve overplotting problems with external labels if multiple pie charts are created. The distance of external labels on pie charts can be modified with the routine PIEVAL.
• PIECBK defines a callback routine for pie charts that is called from PIEGRF before each segment. The callback routine can modify the appearance of pie charts such as suppressing or shifting single labels. PIECBK is a replacement of the old routine USRPIE that could not be used with shareable Dislin libraries.
• The range of the possible axis scaling is enlarged for elliptical and cylindrical projections. The center of the X-axis scaling can now be anywhere between -180 and 180 degrees.
• Shaded countries plotted with the routines SHDEUR, SHDASI, etc. are also displayed if the axis scalings are outside of the intervals (-180., 180) and (-90., 90) degrees. The colour value -1 is now accepted by these routines for using the foreground colour.
• A call of SENDBF in ENDGRF can be suppressed with the routine BUFMOD to solve a reported problem with double buffering.
• The polygon clipping routine POLCLP was not working correctly in the Dislin C libraries. The bug is fixed.
• A bug in the routine SWGTBS for the keywords 'ALIGN' and 'VERIFY' is corrected.
• Bahrain was missing in SHDASI. It can now be plotted with the index 51.
• Labels in contour lines could be plotted outside of the axis system if a hardware font was used. This bug is fixed.

24-June-2009

Dislin is upgraded from version 9.5 to version 9.5 A with the following changes:

• The shortly introduced new TeX instructions \left and \right for plotting bracket symbols in formulas use now automatically the same size as the included partial formula. The instruction \. is added for plotting only a single opening or closing bracket. Some options for changing the behaviour of bracket symbols are added to the routines TEXOPT and TEXVAL.
• The data format of the Global Self-consistant Hierarchical High-resolution Shorelines (GSHHS) by Paul Wessel has changed. Dislin was no longer capable to plot the current distribution of the GSHHS map files. This Dislin update solves the problem. The option 'RIVERS' is added to the routine MAPLEV for displaying the WDB rivers that are included in the GSHHS distribution. The GSHHS distribution can be copied from ftp://ftp.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhs/.
• The options 'DYEAR' and 'QYEAR' are added to the routine LABMOD for the keyword 'STEP' to use a label step of two and four years in date labels.
• Vertical labels in contours can be enabled with the option LABTYP ('VERT', 'CONTUR'). The default option is LABTYP ('HORI', 'CONTUR').
• The Dislin routine CHAWTH for changing the width of characters is also working for PostScript characters.
• The new routine DOEVNT is included for processing events in the widget event queue. This routine should be called during time intensive calculations in widget programs for giving an user the chance to interact with the program (i.e. to abort the calculation).
• The routine CURV3D can now plot true 3-D curves (tube segments instead of line segments) if the option SHDMOD ('3D', 'CURVE') is set before. The new routines THKC3D and MSHCRV define the thickness and the mesh resolution of 3-D curves.

28-May-2009

Some small changes are applied to the most Dislin distributions:

• Smooth surfaces can be used with PostScript output. This was only possible for PDF, screen and image formats until yet.
• The Dislin routine CRVTRI supports now the output of smooth coloured triangles to PostScript and PDF formats. Mesh grids can be enabled with the option SURMSH ('ON').
• The TeX instruction \cdot was not working for the character encoding ISO-Latin-1. Thanks to Jens Bischoff for the hint.
• The new TeX instructions \right and \left preceding one of the bracket symbols '[', '(', '{', ']', ')' and '}' are added to Dislin for plotting brackets in formulas. The commands \big, \Big, \bigg, \Bigg and \low preceding a bracket symbol plot manual sized bracket symbols. Thanks also to Jens for the suggestions.

A few small bugs are corrected for the Dislin Windows distributions:

• The routine SWGBUT has not set correctly the status of button widgets for Windows. Thanks to David Baxendale for the report.
• WMF files became corrupted if the page size is greater than nearly 60 cm. The corresponding coordinates were too big for the 16-bit WMF format. Dislin switches now to a lower resolution for oversized pages. Thanks to Ian Williams for the hint.
• Alberto Gonzalez reported that the edit mode of single table cells in table widgets could not be changed with the routine SWGTBS for the native Fortran 90/95 Windows distributions of Dislin. The bug is corrected.
• Axis labels with the value zero could have a minus sign or an additional leading 0. Jens Bischoff has observed this strange behaviour in the double precision libraries of Dislin that are used for example by the Dislin Perl modules. Thanks to Jens for the report.

30-March-2009

Dislin version 9.5 is released with the following new features:

• SHDNOR and SHDSOU are new routines for plotting shaded North, Central and South American countries.
• The routines VECFLD, VECF3D and FIELD3D display vector fields with arrows. The appearance of the arrows can be modified with the routines VECCLR and VECOPT.
• PIKE3D plots a 3-D arrow head. This routine is used in Dislin for plotting arrows in 3-D vectors (i.e. in VECF3D and VECTR3).
• The keywords 'ISO5', 'KOI8', 'ISO7' and 'UTF8' in the routine CHACOD support additional encodings for Cyrillic, Greek and Unicode characters.
• The utility routine UTFINT converts an UTF8 character string to Unicode numbers. INTUTF converts Unicode numbers to an UTF8 string.
• FILOPT is a new routine that can change the syntax of plotfile names and file versions.
• The options 'FILE' and 'APPEND' are added to the routines ERRMOD and ERRDEV for special error handlings.
• The option 'MDELAY' is added to WINOPT for setting milliseconds as delay time in DISFIN.
• 'END' is an additional keyword for SWGOPT for modifying the behaviour of callback routines for scale widgets.
• The routine GWGBUT can now also request the status of push button widgets (if they are pressed or not).
• All reported bugs are corrected.

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