some comments to ongoing debates

[PyX/mjg.git] / CHANGES

PyX

TODO:
  - graph module
    - common bboxes for different graphs
    - exceptions in drawsymbol & friends...
    - 3d graphs, circular graphs
  - style module:
    - default patterns
    - make dash length available
  - text module:
    - SlantFont & Co support
    - keep an eye on PEP 324 (popen 5): it could make the texrunner much easier
    - messageparser for replaced fontsizes: Warning
    - messageparser for size differences at the end: Warning not Exception
    - messageparser for overfull/underfull vbox/hbox: Warning not Exception
    - newline removal when not disturbing texmessages only
  - graph.data module:
    - use csv module (new in 2.3)
    - Check for "inf" and "nan" in datafiles.
      (When plotted, the graph does not complain, but the postscript will be broken)
  - canvas module:
    - finish multi page PostScript output
    - contructor should only take a texrunner keyword argument
    - set method???
    - PDF support
    - SVG support
  - style and color module:
    - support modification of existing styles via __call__
  - bbox module:
    - height -> getheight, ...
  - unit module:
    - maybe we should never convert implicitly into visual/width, etc. lengths
  - mathtree:
    - might be moved into the graph
    - perform calc by means of Python itself (see eval code in graph.data, but
      we should use compiled code instead of eval)
  - deco module:
    - think hard about different paths in decoratedpath class
    - adjust parameters of cycloid and smoothed
      AW: I suggest to use cycloid with default curvesperloop=5.
  - dvifile module:
    - support single-character mode
  - path module:
    - arclentoparam should raise an exception when the arclen is out of range
    - it seems to be, that epsilon is a feature of normsubpath;
      AW: Why is there (also) a self.epsilon?
      JL: What class does self refer to?
      AW: I'm sorry for not being precise. Both, normpath and normsubpath do
          have an epsilon. I'm not sure if we should do that (its slightly
          confusing). In normpath._findsubpath we should refer to the
          epsilons of the subpath. The only usage of epsilon left in normpath
          is in the constructor and in append (BTW -- we do have some code
          dublication here). A possibility would be to add a keyword-argument
          epsilon to append. The point is, that I would like to get rid of
          self.epsilon, where self is a normpath instance ...
    - How about normpathel.begintrafo() and normpathel.endtrafo()?
      JL: -1
      AW: May I be able to change your rank to -0 when comming up with a
          profile for typical use cases of (new style) boxes? We do have
          begin, at and end for the normpathel's. Why is the analogous for
          normpathel.trafo a bad idea?
  - color module:
    - what should we do for palette when only one entry

  Documentation:
    - path module:
      - describe + vs <<
      - more details in path constructor: allowed pathels, first pathel...
    - deco module:
      - cycloid decorator
      - smoothed decorator
    - graphics section:
      Attributes (clearing merging ) and changeable attributes should be 
      explained at a central place.
    - section titles: "Axes" -> "Axes - module axis" or similar

  FAQ:
    - describe creation and modification (inplace and ``modify by new'') of
      graph data

0.7 (xxxx/xx/xx):
  - path module:
    - names of local and member variables now follow the naming convention of
      having a _pt suffix when containing lengths in points
  - bbox module:
    - names of local and member variables now follow the naming convention of
      having a _pt suffix when containing lengths in points
    - enlarge was misspelled as enlarged
    - renamed _bbox -> bbox_pt
    - new bbox method center, which returns the coordinates of the center
      of the bbox
    - enlarge and enlarged do no longer interprete unqualified lengths as
      being of type visual
  - unit module:
    - unit.cm, unit.t_cm, etc. are no longer sub classes but instances
      of length
  - canvas module:
    - added new classes page and document for multipage PostScript output

0.6.2 (2004/04/07):
  - graph module:
    - fixed title=None + graph key issue reported by Gabriel Vasseur
    - graph.axis.painter.plain -> graph.axis.painter.regular
      (as it was in parts of the documentation already)
    - changeable-gridattrs-become-None-bug fixed
    - graph style cutting outside lines (double-)fixed

0.6.1 (2004/03/31):
  - fixes missing install of the graph and axis directories introduced in 0.6
  - some minor updates to the faq

0.6 (2004/03/30):
  - graph module:
    - reorganisation of the graph structure finished (there might be some
      small pending issues, but the basic restructuring is done with this release):
      - graph splitted into several modules in pyx/graph and pyx/graph/axis
      - painters are using the new attribute scheme including changeable
        attributes
      - graph styles rewrite
      - graph data rewrite
    - axis zeropath feature has been removed
    - mergelabels removed; linpart doesn't have a label argument anymore
    - names and texts removed from baraxis
    - iteration on graph style, when it is used several times in the same graph
    - symbols + lines -> symbollines; symbols do not allow setting lineattrs,
      and lines not symbolattrs
    - manual line clipping (do not include unneeded line segments when the
      axis range is set manually etc.)
    - automatic file key titles
    - graph.data now also includes the old data module
    - data.list adds (by default) a line number like data.file
      (thus regular columns are counted from 1)
  - path:
    - added new pathels multilineto_pt and multicurveto which allows to specify
      a list of points and can thus be much more efficient
    - internal methods return coordinates in pts
    - arclentoparam returns only parameters not total length
    - added path.arclength_pt, path.at_pt, path.begin_pt, path.end_pt (and
      correspondingly for normpath)
    - complete refactoring of the normpath class: normpaths now consist of
      normsubpaths which themselves consist of normlines and normcurves This is
      much more convenient for any routines working with normpaths.
    - reversing of closed sub paths does not change the first point of the sub
      path
    - renamed: arclength -> arclen
    - renamed: lentopar -> arclentoparam
    - renamed: glue -> joined
    - normpath now supports join, the in-place version of joined
    - path and normpath method raise exception instead of returning None
      when parameter is out of range
    - the accuracy epsilon can now only be specified in normpath and normsubpath
      constructor and no longer in arguments of path and normpath methods
    - negative parameters are no longer supported in path and normpath methods
    - path and normpath methods which accept parameter value param now
      alternatively accept an arc length
  - deco module:
    - cycloid decorator
    - smoothed decorator
    - arrow heads are no longer stroked (as suggested by Magnus Lie Hetland)
  - canvas:
    - writeEPSfile deprecates writetofile
    - internally, write methods are renamed in outputPS
    - canvas constructor no longer accepts variable argument list but
      expects a list of attrs as first argument (defaulting to []) and
      a texrunner as second argument (defaulting to text.defaulttexrunner)
    - set, draw, stroke and fill no longer return self, i.e., the canvas, but None
  - bbox module:
     - added inplace add (__iadd__), enlarge and transform methods
     - callers use inplace add where possible now (yielding a considerable
       speedup)
    - "undefined" corners of bounding boxes are no longer supported which makes
      the bounding box operations much more efficient.
  - connnector module:
    - renamed _xxx -> xxx_pt
  - epsfile module:
    - removed showbbox argument of epsfile class
  - text module:
    - default handling of texmessages as in the new attribute scheme
    - multiple insert bug fixed
    - made left, right, width, height, depth information available (x length
      not taking into account box transformations)
    - ignore tex message "Please type a command or say `\\end'"
    - added textboxes that are sequentially filled (experimental)
  - examples:
    - mandel.py (contributed by Stephen Phillips)
  - unit module:
    - length comparision (David Beach)
    - x-scale for TeX
    - more unit tests
  - mathtree module:
    - switched to the new parser using pythons parser module
  - data module:
    - removed, it all lives in the graph.data module now, while before it
      was splitted into two separate modules
  - tex module:
    - not imported by default anymore
    - obsolete warning when importing this module

0.5.1 (2004/01/22):
  - distribution:
    - include missing c-files for optional extension modules
  - prolog module:
    - fix unpaired BeginProcSet/EndProcSet in font enconding

0.5 (2004/01/20):
  - setup.py and distribution:
    - allow customization of the extension modules built (via setup.cfg)
    - disable building pykpathsea module by default
    - more detailed description of install process in INSTALL
    - provide more information and pointers to other files in README
    - include example data files in distribution (suggested by Andrea Riciputi)
    - force dvips to write ps files instead of printing them (suggested by Otto Tronarp)
    - includ pyxfaq.pdf in distribution
  - text module:
    - improved is-readable test for lfs files and pyx.def file
    - explicitly quit (La)TeX in cleantmp (helps when quitting with <Ctrl>C)
    - showwaitfortex implemented following a suggestion by Fernando Perez
      (waitfortex is increased to 60 seconds now)
    - support of TeX extension --ipc for reading dvi results while TeX keeps running
    - configurable font mapping files (via pyxrc or parameter of the texrunner constructor)
    - markers to get access to positions within TeX expressions
    - fix: allow for e-tex in texmessage.start (reported by Andrea Riciputi)
    - fix: print warning at syntax errors in font mapping file and continue (cf. bug #795271)
    - remove limitation on number of fonts in dvi file
    - added native virtual font support
    - dvicopy support not needed anymore (it is still available, but obsolete and
      removed from the documentation)
    - do not include too many glyphs in the eps file
    - _xxx -> xxx_pt renaming
  - dvifile module (NEW):
    - separated from the text module
    - dvifile class returns standard pyx canvas instances on readpage
  - graph module:
    - removed manualpart and partitioners mix keyword
    - results of the splitting at "=" in graph.function were not stripped
    - skip title=None in key (cf. bug #821284), properly align a single key entry
    - another (the last?!) axis redesign: axispos -> class of its own
    - some axispos name have changed slightly (zeroline -> zeropath etc.)
    - tick/data-vmin/vmax removed
    - pathaxis
    - linkaxis
    - minor enhancements in exponentionaltexter
    - axes alongs paths including a set of examples
    - mixing a partitioner and manual ticks by two distinct keyword arguments now
    - _xxx -> xxx_pt renaming
    - part -> parter renaming
  - canvas module:
    - stroke, fill, draw, set and insert do no longer accept variable length argument lists but
      an attribute list as last argument
    - stroke and fill now support trafos (TODO: documentation)
    - uppercase version of a4, a3, ... paperformats
  - config module:
    - new module for loading PyX configuration information
  - pyx module:
    - automatically import main modules into pyx namespace as suggested by Fernando 
      Perez.
  - path module:
    - check for sorting of parameter list passed to path.split method
    - _xxx -> xxx_pt renaming
  - deco module (NEW): 
    - contains decoratedpath and decorators from canvas module
    - all predefined decorators are instances now (deco.stroked is thus ok) and 
      attributes have to be passed explicitely, e.g., deco.earrow.small(attrs=color.rgb.red) 
      and deco.stroked([color.rgb.blue])
  - style module (NEW):
    - contains all line- and fillstyles which formerly had been defined in the canvas module
    - dash now supports relative dash lengths (as suggested by Otto Tronarp)
  - mathtree module:
    - fixed incorrect handling of - (for instance -x**2 was not negative)
  - attrlist module:
    - contents have been moved to the (obsolete) tex module, which was the only user anyhow, and
      the module itself was removed
  - t1strip module:
    - new fallback solution in pure python
    - bugfix: pyxadapt.h needs to open files binary under Windows (reported by Gary Pajer)
  - box module:
    - _xxx -> xxx_pt renaming
  - trafo module:
    - _xxx -> xxx_pt renaming

0.4.1 (2003/09/17):
  - canvas module:
    - "in" to "inch" in paperformats
  - text module:
    - fix pyx.def hack occuring whenever \ProcessOptions* was used by a package
  - pykpathsea module:
    - implement different file formats for Python version of module
  - t1strip module:
    - python fallback solution should behave the same way as c extension module (closes SF bug #799182 reported
      by Marcus Mendenhall)
  - __init__.py:
    - added "connector" to __all__

0.4 (2003/08/22):
  - graph module:
    - separate texter out of the axispainter
    - axis/partitioner/texter/painter/axispos redesign & interfaces
    - tick.text is renamed to tick.label
    - ticks and labels are renamed to tickpos/tickdist and labelpos/labeldist in partitioning
    - ticks can be used in the part to mix a partitioner with some manual ticks
      -> manualpart and the mix technique is not needed anymore
         (both things are still available and working, but they will be removed in the future)
    - _ensurefrac is implemented inside the frac constructor now; initialization is possible by:
      - a (enum, denom) tuple now (previously there were two arguments)
      - a string (as before via _ensurefrac)
      - exponential strings are allowed as well (e.g. "1e10" etc.)
      - a float (precision is determined by floatprecision -- the number of decimal places)
    - dense -> density
    - axis.maxworse
    - axis interface
  - text module:
    - reset() method for the texrunner
    - automatic restart of a TeX instance with the same preamble (preamble changes are not possible)
    - texmessage.loadfd for accepting font description loading
    - don't bail out on width_index == 0, but mark character invalid instead
    - dvicopy flag
    - support for specials; pyxgraphics flag
    - support psfonts.map: font names, font encodings
    - bugfix \def\ProcessPyXBox -> \long\def\ProcessPyXBox
    - improved lfs handling
  - data module:
    - full documentation via doc strings
  - connector module:
    - some preliminary version
  - box module:
    - multiple radii (up to two per point) and softnesses
    - ensurecenter added --- do we always force the creation of a center?
  - path module:
    - lentopar methods added including some tests
  - epsfile module:
    - new parameter bbox allows to override the bounding box of the eps file

  bugfixes:
  - text module:
    - derive TFMError and DVIError correctly from exceptions.Exception
    - close files and pipes, if they are no longer used (thanks to Marcus Mendenhall)
    - remove DeprecationWarning in Python 2.3 (thanks to Marcus Mendenhall)
  - box module:
    - correct rounding algorithm (Michael Schindler)
  - graph module:
    - refer to the graphs texrunner instead of the defaulttexrunner (cf. #728209)
    - rounding towards zero bugfix in autolinpart
    - log axis range rating bugfix
  - mathtree module:
    - addarg bugs (#738724)
  - epsfile module:
    - fix mixing up of height and width in scale calculation
  - and various other fixer here and there

0.3.1 (2003/04/04):
  - text module:
    - fix bug in dvi rule code where width was height
    - fix preamble attribute checking bug
    - fix texmessage.load pattern search instead of pattern match bug
    - renamed vbox to parbox (was done in 0.3 partially only)
  - data module:
    - allow for tuples in arguments of the data class
    - convenience: exchanged order of named parameters in data.data
  - graph module:
    - convenience: allow for part=None in _axis (base of linaxis and logaxis)
  - examples:
    - added a latex example (requested)
    - added a attributechange example (requested)
    - added back the integral example (requested; prior PyX 0.3 it was part of the user manual)
    - small change in vector example (allow for the access to the texrunner)
    - examples included in source distribution
  - canvas module:
    - correct arrow template calculation for very short paths

0.3 (2003/03/31):
  - examples
    - new easy to use example generation (will hopefully lead to nice examples)
  - unit box:
    - new module for handling of convex polygons (taken out of the graph module)
  - unit helper:
    - new module containing a collection of helper functions (taken out of the graph module)
    - moved the attrlist into helper -- as plain functions; attrlist becomes obsolete
  - text module:
    - new module: a new and preferable integration of TeX/LaTeX
  - t1strip module:
    - strip glyphs from pfa/pfb-fonts
    - there is a C implementation taken from pdftex
    - fallback solution via an external program (pfb2pfa)
  - pykpathsea module:
    - (partial) C binding to libkpathsea
    - fallback solution via an external program (kpsewhich)
  - graph module:
    - removed some code duplication (various axis painters)
    - use text module instead of the obsolete tex module
    - allow for tailing zeros of automatic generated labels
    - allow for missing data in bar graphs -> skipmissing parameter
    - remove the support for variables given as keyword arguments in data constructor
    - use context instead of extern for extern variables and functions
    - graph keys; titles in data/function/etc.
  - unit module:
    - new classes for visual and width lengths, aliases for user length (u_pt = pt)
    - all length classes have now by default a quantifier 1 (instead of 0), such that,
      for instance, 5*unit.t_cm() == unit.t_cm(5)
    - default_unit now has to be set via unit.set. For instance: unit.set(defaultunit="m").
    - convert_to is now an internal function, which moreover does not longer accept tuples or lists
  - bbox module:
    - new class _bbox (the former bbox) which accepts points in the constructor. This is used
      for internal purposes.
    - the bbox constructor now accepts user lengths in the constructor.
    - new methods height, width, top, bottom, left, right
    - ll & ur ???, what about ul and lr -> ugly!
    - enlarge (was enhance) now allows selective enlargement to the left, bottom, right and top
    - output HiResBoundingBox
    - never reduce bbox upon output
  - epsfile module:
    - new constructor signature, more in line with rest of PyX:
      epsfile(x, y, filename, **additional_args)
  - data module:
    - removed additional column support in addcolumn; removed _addcolumn
    - line reduction for datafile like the every parameter in gnuplot
  - canvas module:
    - new way of PS prolog generation that writes only necessary parts
    - added support for patterns
    - canvas.insert() now supports arguments
    - bbox of canvas can be specified in writetofile command explicitely
    - writetofile does not return self anymore
    - arrow template now uses intersection with circle to get size right
      (as per a suggestion by Michael Schindler)
  - mathtree module:
    - added abs function
    - changed the handling of extern functions and all variables
  - color module:
    - gradient renamed to palette
  - numerous bugfixes:
    - problem with sizefile on windows (tex module)
    - allow for strings in graphxy's width and height; allow for width only (graph module)
    - disable rating for labelattrs equals None (graph module)
    - defaultstyle selection, when a list of data is provided to the plot function (graph module)
    - traverse when adding functions as arguments of operators (mathtree module)
    - allow for extern functions in addcolumn (data module)
    - just one common place for the version number
    - fix incorrect exception name MathError (path module)
    - prevent double return of intersections for closed sub paths
    - ...

0.2 (2003/01/17):
  - unit module:
    - allow division of length by numbers
  - trafo module:
    - new transformation: slant
    - renamed all trafo methods to use the participle (i.e translate->translated)
    - the name of all trafo subclasses are verbs (i.e. translation->translate)
  - graph module:
    - mark class renamed to symbol
    - (text-)box distance measurement
    - moved axis partitioning to axis and axis painter
    - automatic axis partitioning (now officially: general cleanup, distance measurement, documentation)
    - splitaxis
    - baraxis, baraxispainter, and bar style
  - data module:
    - previously named datafile module
    - class "_datafile" renamed to class "data"
    - class sectionfile added
    - testsuite
  - mathtree module:
    - extern variables and functions (support in graph.function, graph.paramfunction and data.data)
    - testsuite
  - text module:
    - deferred to Version 0.3
    - running TeX "on the fly" is basically implemented
  - numerous bugfixes:
    - transformation bug (#624068, trafo module)
    - canvas transformations (canvas module???)
    - textbox alignment (graph module)
    - return linewidth upon calculation with linewidths (unit module)
    - allow column number variables with several digits
    - ...
  - british and american spellings (color module, graph module)
  - small logo modifications

0.1 (2002/10/07):
  - initial release