[ANNOUNCEMENT] Gnuplot 3.7.1 released

[Lars Hecking]

 GNUPLOT - Bigger, Longer, Uncut
 ===============================

This is the official announcement of the release of gnuplot 3.7.1.
The official date and time of this version is:
        Date: Fri Oct 22 18:00:00 BST 1999
        Version: 3.7, Patchlevel 1

Most, if not all, known bugs in gnuplot 3.7.0 have been fixed.
See below for a list of changes.

 THE FAQ
 =======

An updated version of the gnuplot FAQ is now available.  It can be found
at the following locations:

http://www.ucc.ie/gnuplot/gnuplot-faq.html
http://www-ihe.etec.uni-karlsruhe.de/mitarbeiter/vonhagen/gnuplot-faq.html
ftp://ftp.ucc.ie/pub/gnuplot/faq/gnuplot-faq.txt
All main distribution sites in the faq/ subdirectory.

 GNUPLOT AND GIF IMAGES
 ======================

An important note to all who wish to create GIF images with gnuplot:

* Gnuplot requires the gd library from http://www.boutell.com/gd/ to       *
* create gif output.  Note that the use of this code may subject your      *
* organisation to a charge of willful patent infringement (as stated       *
* by UNISYS) unless you are in possession of a UNISYS license.             *
*                                                                          *
* The UNISYS patent covers the LZW technology which is used to create      *
* gifs.  To our knowledge, only gd library version 1.3 and 1.4 are free    * 
* of LZW code and should therefore be used with gnuplot (unless you have   *
* a license from Unisys to use LZW code, in which case version 1.2 and 1.5 *
* is fine, too).  The binaries provided here have been built with version  *
* 1.3.  Version 1.6+ cannot be used because support for GIF has been       *
* removed altogether.                                                      *

As all gif-creating versions of gd library seem to have been taken off
www.boutell.com, we are providing gd library versions 1.3 and 1.4 at
the gnuplot distribution sites [1].  Should any legal problems arise,
we will remove this software.

 The PNG image format is an alternative to gif. See [2].

 DISTRIBUTION
 ============

By the time you receive this, copies of gnuplot-3.7.1.tar.gz
should be at the official repositories.  Binary versions for
various non-Unix platforms will be made available in the same
places.  Please allow a couple of days for these distributions
to appear.

A diffs file relative to gnuplot-3.7 is also available. To apply
the patch, use the following procedure:

$ gunzip gnuplot-3.7.tar.gz
$ gunzip gnuplot-3.7.0-3.7.1.diff.gz
$ cd gnuplot-3.7
$ patch -p1 <../gnuplot-3.7.0-3.7.1.diff

All distribution archives are signed with a public key which is
available from public key servers.  For more information, see the
README and PGPKEYS file at the distribution sites.

 DISTRIBUTION SITES
 ==================

NORTH AMERICA

     Anonymous ftp to ftp.gnuplot.vt.edu:
     ftp://ftp.gnuplot.vt.edu/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-3.7.1.tar.gz

     Alternatively, you can use your web browser to get gnuplot
     from the gnuplot web pages at

     http://members.theglobe.com/gnuplot/gp371tar.gz
     http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Foothills/6647/gp371tar.gz

     Anonymous ftp to ftp.dartmouth.edu. Please try the
     other sites first!
     ftp://ftp.dartmouth.edu/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-3.7.1.tar.gz

AUSTRALIA:

     From the AARNet Mirror Project:
     ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gnuplot/
     http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gnuplot/

     Anonymous ftp to ftp.cc.monash.edu.au:
     ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-3.7.1.tar.gz

EUROPE:

     Anonymous ftp to ftp.irisa.fr:
     ftp://ftp.irisa.fr/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-3.7.1.tar.gz

     Anonymous ftp to ftp.ucc.ie:
     ftp://ftp.ucc.ie/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot-3.7.1.tar.gz

OTHER:

     Source and binary distributions for the Amiga will be available
     on Aminet http://ftp.wustl.edu/~aminet/ and its mirrors as
     gfx/misc/gnuplot-3.7.1bin.lha
     gfx/misc/gnuplot-3.7.1doc.lha
     gfx/misc/gnuplot-3.7.1src.lha

     The latest version for Macintosh is still 2.0b4, based on a long
     obsolete beta version of gnuplot.

 CHANGELOG
 =========

 The following bugs have been fixed since the release of gnuplot 3.7:

 + fix for negative aspect ratio and reversed x axis
 + fixes in the cgm, eepic, png and pslatex drivers
 + fix in the data fitting code (value of last parameter not stored)
 + fixes for HP-UX, NEXT, and Windows
 + fix compiling on IRIX 6.5 (docs/Makefile problem)
 + fixes for save and set lmargin commands
 + fix for 'set view <z_scale>' (compressed z-axis) problem
 + fix for surface plots and negative ticslevel
 + fix for multiline labels
 + fix for multiplot and eps output
 + fixed exit/quit in batch mode
 + fixed buffering bug in X11 driver
 + fixed bug for logscale plots with unused y2 axis

 Although this is mainly a bugfix release, some new features have
 found their way into the code:

 o a stdin wrapper for gnuplot on Windows platforms (pgnuplot)
 o new drivers for BeOS, metapost, MacOS X Server
 o fitting of time series data
 o Slaven Rezic's perltk driver is now part of the tkcanvas driver
 o in latex output, the embedding document font is now the default font
 o gnuplot now returns a proper exit status. This means better
   scriptability, e.g. with common Unix shells:

   $ if echo "set terminal gif" | gnuplot >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
   > echo "gif driver supported"
   > else
   > echo "gif driver not supported"
   > fi
   gif driver supported
   $ 

   This is quite useful for programs which use gnuplot as graphics
   backend, e.g. Octave.

 Furthermore, the following updates were made:

 * Updated makefiles and autoconf files
 * Updated documentation and FAQ
 * Improved configuration of GNU readline support
 * Security: the Linux SVGAlib driver is now disabled by default
 * Support for GNU plotutils 2.2

 THE CONTRIB SECTION
 ===================

 An improved gnuplot mode for X/Emacs by Bruce Ravel is available from
 http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel/gnuplot/, and we will add it to
 the gnuplot distribution from the next release on.

 CREDITS
 =======

 The gnuplot team would like to thank all who have contributed to this
 release through discussions, suggestions, bug reports, and patches,
 on Usenet and mailing lists.  Special thanks go to Alex Woo for setting
 up and maintaining the new gnuplot web sites.  To Dick Crawford for his
 untiring and competent presence on comp.graphics.apps.gnuplot.  To Juergen
 von Hagen for adopting the orphaned FAQ list.  And to Hans-Bernhard Broeker
 for neverending supply of bug fixes.
 
                                        -Thomas Williams-
                                        -Lars Hecking-

 FOOTNOTES
 =========

 [1] The gif terminal driver requires third party software. Because the
     version of gd library currently at http://www.boutell.com/gd/ does
     NOT create gif images, we are providing gd library version 1.3 and 1.4
     at from the gnuplot distribution sites.

 [2] the png terminal driver requires third party software. The png graphics
     library and zlib can be downloaded from
     http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png/pngcode.html
     and
     http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/zlib/
     respectively. They are also available from the gnuplot distribution
     sites.



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