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KDE Science/Kst/roadmap

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Below is a tentative roadmap for future versions, based on a review of all kst bugs referenced in KDE's bugzilla and mailing list discussions. Kst versions 2.x, based on Qt4 and available on all major platforms, are considered stable and the latest Kst 2 version is recommended for production use. The Kst 1.x series, based on Qt3 and KDE libraries is no longer maintained. A summary of the changes introduced in previous 2.x versions can be found on the previous versions page.

2.0 Series: new version ported to Qt4, stable

Previous version: 2.0.7 (released July 17th 2013)

For a more complete summary of the main new features see the release announcement.

  • New features
    • ASCII read time in HH:MM:SS.sss format (243684+243445)
    • ASCII performance improvements
    • Support for threaded reading and file buffer to overcome Windows 32 bit memory-per-process limitations (useful when reading >1GB ASCII files!)
    • Scripting: plugins, histograms and spectrums
    • Automatic "unpacking" of netCDF vectors of type ncShort if they have scale_factor and add_offset attributes
    • Improve naming of exported graphics by using the tab's name as suffix
  • UI
    • Actions to copy parts of the window status bar into the clipboard: X copies the X coordinate, Y the Y coordinate and Ctrl + C copies the window status message
    • Improve formatting of many dialogs
    • Drawing points: separate point size
    • In tied zoom mode, X only and Y only cursor extension lines appear in all tied windows
  • Bug fixes
    • Fix a bug where if you drag a plot to a new tab, it wasn't picked up by future autoformat actions nor listed in plot lists
    • Fix printing to PDF under Windows
    • Fix purge so ancestors of ancestors of curves used in plots don't get purged, and so that scalars/vectors used in labels (and their ancestors) don't get purged
    • Fix gaussian + Lorentzian fits so that they actually fit
    • Make relative file paths work regardless of where kst2 is called from
    • Various fixes to font scaling

Current version: 2.0.8 - new GUI features and polish (released July 19th 2014)

For a more complete summary of the main new features see the release announcement.

  • UI
    • Provide translations thanks to KDE's i18n team
    • Declutter the data manager / find-as-you-type filter as in kst 1.x (257164)
    • Revamped vector view with more display formats and multiple simultaneous vectors (257285, 257287) - see labplot/scidavis/origin
    • Scalar selector improvements including bug 325087
    • When selecting multiple objects in "edit multiple" mode, '*' character no longer needed at the beginning or at the end of the filter string
    • feedback during loading of large documents (92868+92870)
  • Misc
    • Allow reading specific subsets of ASCII starting at any line+ improve ASCII datasource again
    • New command line option -T to create a new tab
    • Differentiate plugin now uses consecutive points
    • Allow importing vectors without creating plots (bug 307723)
    • Datamode improvements with matrices
    • Update system fixes (bug 325314)
    • Fix viewitems so that the dialogs are properly updated when in 'fix to data' mode
    • New datasource: sourcelist, repetition of otherwise identical sources
    • New datasource: FITS table
    • Equations: add 'degree' versions of the trig functions: sind, cosd, etc + atan2(x, y)
    • Add an "unwind" filter: for data fields that have wrapped
  • Bug fixes
    • Wrong prefix to session and data file lists on Windows (bug 325086)
    • Filter loses vector selection (bug 325393)
    • Fixes to update system
    • Make sure custom color applies to all lines of a multi line text label
    • Fix enabling/disabling widgets in FFT options -> BUG: 328371
    • In datawizard, don't create plots if no curves -> BUG: 307723
    • Update curve names in plot dialog when changed -> BUG: 318139
    • Further performance improvements

Planned for future releases (2.1.0)

  • Scripting
    • Finish and package python scripting (at least a beta release), on all platforms
  • Bug fixes
    • with many plots in a window and large axis numbers, the labels overlap
    • anti-aliased rotated axes labels (257682)
  • Various checks
    • check change multiple (esp. on view objects)...
    • undo/redo
    • tooltips + What's this
    • check less often-used plot types
    • documentation
  • UI
    • legends in more prominent place in plot dialog (236473)
    • new curve placement widget missing tab selection
    • layout mode span tabs
  • Features
    • jump to next marker
    • time-based range tools
    • equations and plugins should no longer generate X slave vector (272575)
    • capability to insert scalar in x/y markers (257153)
    • new options to create/edit vectors

2.1 Series: new features + reactivate main missing things from kst 1.x

2.1.0: New features requiring .kst file format update

  • Impact on the file format
    • dimensions tab for line/arrow: x,y instead of length, angle
    • save vectors to file (or embedded) (238923+...)
    • different colors/sizes for symbols and lines
    • each marker should have its own graphic properties
  • Features
    • text box resizing (221823)
    • cut/copy/paste
    • ASCII configs (216744)
    • ASCII could have an "auto format" mode which uses heuristics to detect the format
    • proper support or warning for files with non-unique field names (130195) Fixed?
    • in-line changing of axis ranges, if easy (118774)

2.1.1: All kst 1.x features available

  • easy "basic plugins" a la kst 1.x with plugin manager
  • read kst 1.x files, at least load the data and create data objects, layout may not be pixel-perfect

2.1.2: More KDE integration (248184)

  • file dialog
  • toolbar customization
  • GHNS (scripts, sample data, ...)
  • etc...

2.2 Series: Further improvements

  • mask data points for plugin operation (need to review 112549+110734+96249+86915)
  • quick curve creation RMB menu (136780)
  • multi-file data wizard if the above is not sufficient (124942)
  • multiple y axes (126743)
  • custom strings in general settings (142641)
  • sticky "color per file" (124558)
  • flow-around objects (115136+109430+157791), mostly for metadata/custom strings in the borders - for advanced layouting maybe but SVG export may be a nice way to get around it
  • once custom strings and flow-around exist, add support for templates (109472)
  • multiple -Fx switches on command line (115662, comment #8)
  • "buddyVector" feature for automatic detection of X-axis vector (mail on the list, point 2)
  • data sinks to save data back to disk
  • plot manager (124090)
  • proper approach for the update of file metadata used in labels when using change data file ("Metadata updates" mail to be sent by NB)
  • thread kst2
  • edit multiple for view objects, or "style paste" option à la Word or inkscape
  • new datasource: general-purpose configurable binary reader
  • new datasource: general-purpose configurable XML reader
  • new datasource: general-purpose configurable database (SQL) reader
  • end-to-end Arinc429 support?
  • 3D features? (or suggest paraview instead?)

Long term (GSoC ?)

  • turn kst into a real cool signal processing tool (filter design, etc...)
  • ...
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