Veusz 1.4
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Velvet Ember Under Sky Zenith
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http://home.gna.org/veusz/
Veusz is Copyright (C) 2003-2009 Jeremy Sanders
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 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.
Changes in 1.4:
* Dates can be plotted on axes
* Bar graph component, support bars in groups and stacked bars
with error bars
* Improved import
- text lines can be ignored in imported files
- prefix and suffix can be added to dataset names
- more robust import dialog
* Markers can be "thinned" for large datasets
* Further LaTeX support, including \frac for fractions and \\
for line breaks.
* Keys show error bars on datasets with errors
* Axes can scale plotted data by a factor
More minor changes
* Mathematical expressions can be entered in many places where
numbers are entered (e.g. axis minima)
* Many more latex symbols
* Text labels can also be placed outside graphs directly on pages
* Dataset expressions can be edited
* Data can be copied out of data edit dialog. Rows can be inserted or
deleted.
* Mac format line terminators are allowed in import files
* Preview window resizes properly in import dialog
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
* 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 export
* Scripting interface
* Dataset creation/manipulation
* Embed Veusz within other programs
* Text, CSV and FITS importing
Requirements:
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
For documentation on using Veusz, see the "Documents" directory. The
manual is in pdf, html and text format (generated from docbook).
Issues with the current version:
* Due to Qt, hatched regions sometimes look rather poor when exported
to PostScript or PDF.
* Due to a bug in Qt, some long lines, or using log scales, can lead
to very slow plot times under X11. This problem is seen with
dashed/dotted lines. It is fixed by upgrading to Qt-4.5.1 (the
Veusz binary version includes this Qt version).
* Can be very slow to plot large datasets if antialiasing is enabled.
Right click on graph and disable antialias to speed up output. This
is mostly a problem with older Qt versions, however.
If you enjoy using Veusz, I 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 SVN repository.
Jeremy Sanders
