ANN: Veusz 1.4

[Jeremy Sanders]

Veusz 1.4
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Velvet Ember Under Sky Zenith
-----------------------------
http://home.gna.org/veusz/

Veusz is Copyright (C) 2003-2009 Jeremy Sanders <jeremy at jeremysanders.net>
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