The 5.4.10 patchlevel release repairs a regression in 5.4.9 that caused
a build failure in the postscript terminal if neither cairo nor libgd
support was configured.
This is probably the final update to version 5.4,
as a full release of version 6 is expected by the end of this year.
Gnuplot development is tracked in a git repository on SourceForge.
You can generate a complete history of changes using "git log"
after downloading:
git clone -b branch-5-4-stable git://git.code.sf.net/p/gnuplot/gnuplot-main
Release Notes date: 20-Oct-2023
- FIX postscript: build failed in 5.4.9 if neither gd nor cairo libraries present
- FIX data-dependent variable point properties in polar plots
- FIX configure script modified to work with macOS+Homebrew
- CHANGE use 64-bit integers for iteration (allows iteration over dates)
- NEW qt: support building with Qt6
- CHANGE check plugin version at time of import Bug #2629
- FIX prevent segfault if GNUPLOT_DRIVER_DIR is invalid
- FIX (regression) only y autoscale yerrorbars to points in xrange Bug #2631
- FIX possible memory corruption if clipping causes 0-size polygons
- FIX wxt: initialization of key box toggle state
- FIX post: handle pixmaps Bug #2644
- FIX version reporting in Windows binaries
No other changes
- FIX pseudofiles '+','++' must ignore "set datafile columnheader" Bug #2585
- FIX data from an array must ignore "set datafile columnheader" Bug #2585
- FIX data from an array must ignore "set datafile separator"
- FIX various problems with unbounded plot iteration Bug #2589
- FIX allow plot ... smooth acsplines with filledcurves Bug #2592
- FIX "plot title at {end|beginning}" belongs in KEYSAMPLE layer
- FIX handle empty string in last field of csv file
- FIX Handle nonlinear axes during contour generation Bug #2593
- FIX yerrorbars key sample should match bars in the plot Bug #2598
- FIX "plot with table" must skip all smoothing operations Bug #2610
- FIX cairolatex/epslatex: prevent doubled text in opaque textboxes
- FIX wxt: versions prior to 3.0 do not support XDG Bug #2587
- FIX wxt: fontscale and fontsize handling was inconsistent Bug #2373
- FIX correctly report cardinality of an empty array is zero Bug #2616
- FIX combination of pm3d options "at b" or "at t" with "depthorder"
- FIX combination of 'autotitle columnhead' and 'using col("key")' Bug #2620
- FIX do not complain if XDG files are not found because no $HOME Bug #2623
- FIX windows terminal: arrow length corrected for aspect ratio Bug #2565
- tikz epslatex cairolatex terminals updated to work with TeXLive2023
- NEW plots can use arrow styles that specify "lc rgb variable"
- CHANGE make page layout of "set view map; splot" more like that of "plot"
- - honor "set rmargin" and "set tmargin" Bug #2484
- - display x2label and y2label Bug #2484
- - revised placement of color box Bug #2484
- - reconcile linked axis data and tic ranges Bug #2483
- - apply "set key invert" to splot Bug #2381
- CHANGE cairo terminals: increase internal oversampling factor Bugs #2499 #2369
- CHANGE fig: restore terminal option "pointsmax <N>" Bug #2509
- CHANGE always add a space between items in a "print" command Bug #2488
- CHANGE consistent ordering of input columns for "plot ... ps var pt var" Bug #2524
- CHANGE gnuplot -c script.gp A B -C ... will pass A B -C ... without interpretation
- CHANGE stricter error checks when promoting string to numeric value Bug #2527
- CHANGE report GPVAL_TERM_XMIN and friends as floating point values
- FIX handle combination of axis properties logscale + autoscale + reverse Bug #2347
- FIX mis-handled arguments at start-up of "gnuplot -c script arg1 ..." Bug #2493
- FIX windows: redirected output of printf() Bug #2490
- FIX allow variable point style and point type in plot "with yerrorbars"
- FIX plots "with labels point pt variable" were off-by-one in choosing point type
- FIX contour "with labels" from binary data
- FIX x/y fractional coordinate mouse readout for nonlinear axes Bug #2526
- FIX Support combination of "set surface explicit; set hidden3d" Bug #2521
- NEW "set pm3d border retrace" will use quadrangle color for the border
- NEW "nogrid" flag for plots to opt out of dgrid3d processing
- NEW option "above|below y=<val>" for "plot with fillsteps"
- NEW "set style histogram nokeyseparators" suppress blank key entries Bug #2473
- NEW in "using" context, $# means "number of columns in current data line"
- NEW define on program entry: I = sqrt(-1) = {0.,1.}
- NEW support input data that uses epidemiological date-week formats
- NEW optional fillcolor for "set key opaque"
- NEW provide and document use of a plugin to provide uigamma function
- NEW "with rgbimage" and "with rgbalpha" accept single column ARGB input
- NEW keyword "smooth kdensity period <val>"
- NEW time format %tD encodes days relative to time 0
- NEW pm3d quadrangles in 2D projection are clipped smoothly to x and y
- Support for 64-bit integer arithmetic
- All evaluation of expressions and functions uses 64-bit arithmetic
if supported by the hardware platform.
- Integer overflow is detected and handled according to user preference.
- Voxel grids
- Gnuplot now supports operations based on 3D grids of voxel data.
- The current content of one or more voxel grids can be referenced by
splot commands to assign colors or other properties to plot elements.
- Data in a voxel grids can be plotted by splot styles dots, points,
or isosurface.
- Pixmaps as objects
- "set pixmap" allows import of a png/jpeg/gif image as a pixmap that
can be positioned anywhere in a plot or on the page. Unlike plotting
"with image", pixmap objects retain their original aspect ratio and
size independent of axis scaling or rotation.
Example: http://gnuplot.info/demo_5.4/pixmap.html
- New plot styles and plot options
- New data pre-processing filters
- "smooth zsort" sorts 2D points on values in a 3rd column to determine
their drawing order. In combination with using palette colors, this
facilitates highlighting outliers in a crowded scatter plot.
- New commands and command options
- Voxel grid commands "set vgrid", "set vxrange", "vclear", "vfill"
and voxel().
- New options "set walls" and "set grid vertical" for showing the
xy, xz, and yz planes in 3D plots.
- "set table separator {tab|comma|"char"}" and "plot with table"
can be used to create csv files.
- Array size can be implicit if an initializer is present, e.g.
Array A = [1,2,3]
- Extra lines of text or symbols in the key can be added by
substituting "keyentry" in place of a filename or function in
plot and splot commands.
- User-specified interpretation of mouse coordinates.
See map-projection demos.
- The "load" command can input commands from a data block as an
alternative to reading them from a file.
- "set datafile columnheaders" causes the first line of input to be
read as strings rather than as data values. This is equivalent to
"set key autotitle columnheader" but does not affect generation of
key entries. Column headers are collected into an array of strings
by any subsequent "stats" commands.
- "set view projection {xz|yz}"
- New terminals and terminal options
- New latex terminal "pict2e" supersedes older terminals "latex",
"emtex", "eepic", and "tpic", which are no longer built by default.
- The "pstricks" terminal now supports current gnuplot features
including RGB colors, transparency, filled polygons, and boxes.
- The "pcl5" terminal now supports current gnuplot features.
- The "texdraw" terminal has been updated.
- The "windows" terminal now uses Direct2D rather than GDI/GDI+.
- The "dospc" and "svga" DOS terminals now support interactive
terminal and mouse input.
- Other new features
- Enhanced text mode accepts the escape sequence \U+xxxx (where xxxx
is a 4 or 5 character hexadecimal) to represent a Unicode code point
that is converted to the corresponding UTF-8 byte sequence on output.
- Plot titles are evaluated after plotting, rather than before.
This allows the title to reference values generated while plotting.
- Hypertext from "set label ... hypertext" is sent to the clipboard
on left mouse-click.
- Time/date input recognizes format %p to handle am/pm field
- Support for multiple textbox styles
- Built-in modified Bessel functions (besi0 besi1 besin)
- Built-in order N Bessel functions of the 1st and 2nd kind (besjn besyn)
- Changes/Differences to previous gnuplot versions
- Plot style "with parallelaxes" has revised syntax to match
histogram and spiderplot commands. There is no longer a limit
on the number of axes in a plot, and iteration is possible:
E.g.: "plot for [column=1:N] DATA using column with parallelaxes"
- pm3d filled area quadrangles are clipped smoothly to the current
zrange. This affects pm3d surfaces and the faces of 3D boxes,
polygons, etc.
Example: http://gnuplot.info/demo_5.4/pm3d_clip.html
- Imaginary values returned by the "using" specifier of a 2D plot
are treated as undefined values (NaN). This was already true for
function plots and for 3D data plots.
- The "set fontpath" command is deprecated (only affects PostScript).
- Since the "latex" and "eepic" terminals are deprecated, the
tutorial for using them is no longer included with the distribution.
The "gnuplot mode" elisp and TeX files for use with emacs are now
maintained as a separate project: https://github.com/bruceravel/gnuplot-mode
so there is no longer a configuration option --with-lisp-files.
LaTeX-related terminal drivers latex, emtex, eepic, and tpic are no longer
built by default. Their closest equivalent is the new pict2e terminal, but
LaTeX users who want support for the full range of gnuplot plot styles are
recommended to use the cairolatex or tikz terminals.
The Japanese man page is provided both in eucJP and UTF-8 encodings.
Installation into appropriate directories is left to packagers.
The 5.4 source code supports three primary cross-platform interactive
modes in addition to several platform-specific modes.
- Qt
The qt terminal supports interactive display with menu-driven
output to png, svg or pdf. If either Qt4 or Qt5 is detected by the
configure script, this will be the default terminal. It is now the
fastest and most full-featured interactive terminal option.
To disable this terminal:
./configure --without-qt
To force use of Qt4 even if Qt5 is present:
./configure --with-qt=qt4
- Cairo/pango/wxWidgets
This set of terminals includes pngcairo, pdfcairo, epscairo, and cairolatex
for output to a file. The wxt terminal provides interactive display
All of these will be built by default if the configuration script finds
the required libcairo, libpango, libcairo, libwxgtk, and related
support libraries
To disable these terminals:
./configure --without-cairo
./configure --with-cairo --disable-wxwidgets
- X11 (the "classic" interactive interface)
This used to be the preferred interactive interface, but the newer
wxt and qt terminals offer nicer output and a wider range of features.
Of course the terminals (output modes) present in previous gnuplot versions
are also still available. These include, among many more obscure options:
The sixel or sixelgd terminals display graphics in-line with the commands
typed on a suitable terminal emulator. For example "xterm -ti 340"
emulates a vt340 with sixel color graphics. The yaft terminal emulator
can be run at linux console level with no x11 or other windowing system
active.
- Mouseable output for display on the web can be created using either
the canvas terminal (HTML5 2D canvas element) or the svg terminal.
Both allow zooming, toggling plot elements on/off, and user-scriptable
hot keys.
You can download a source tarball for the current gnuplot version
from the gnuplot development site on SourceForge.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot
Installation instructions are available in the source itself; the short
version for linux/unix-like systems is to unpack the tarball and then
build it:
cd gnuplot-5.4.10 ; ./configure ; make
test it:
make check
install it:
make install
Pay careful attention to the output of the ./configure script.
It may indicate that some output drivers have been omitted because the
necessary support libraries were not found. In general you need to have
previously installed the "-devel-" versions of these libraries.
Please report all bugs and installation problems to the bug tracker
on SourceForge:
https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/bugs/
Gnuplot development is ongoing. The development branch contains preliminary
implementations of new features. The current development branch version is 6.
Bugfixes to version 5.4 will appear in patchlevel releases 5.4.1, 5.4.2, etc.,
approximately twice a year or as needed to correct a serious problem.