KDE Science/Kst/roadmap

Below is a tentative roadmap, based on a review of all kst bugs referenced in KDE's bugzilla and mailing list discussions.

2.0 Series: early adopters and new users

2.0.1: Intermediate bug fix release (released Nov. 12th 2010)

• finalize menu/toolbar reorganization (249799)
• finalize move plots between tabs (248885)
• fix crash when moving view items (253165)
• proper escaping of special characters (250014)
• finish plot dialog revamp (252289) - basically:
  • connect the "Edit" button in the Contents page
  • ensure right order of elements in the left pane (right now the first two are not the most relevant ones)
  • make sure the left pane is always large enough (in width)
• special characters escaping (250014)
• update pb in the data manager (248888)
• X-only zoom and Y-only zoom toolbar buttons (252080)

2.0.2: Critical bugfix (released Nov. 18th 2010)

Released close to 2.0.1 due to a critical bug in 2.0.1 that made it basically unusable. Also implemented some small stuff:

• fix clipping when dragging
• allow inserting vector/scalar names at cursor position in the equation editor

2.0.3: Polishing (released April 16th 2011)

• Bugfixes/polish
  • update fixes (plugin -> equation -> etc, dependencies not always updated)
  • y-local zoom with shared axis box (236678)
  • Saving and reloading a file leads to empty data manager (256401) + other session management issues
  • data manager UI detail: click on the + symbol, then double-click on the item below => you get the dialog corresponding to the wrong item
  • labels from vectors with special chars in their names need to be properly escaped
  • labels generated by fits are broken
  • empty labels not taken into account in plot dialog (needs one space)
  • apply button greyed out in some dialogs
  • edit multiple for vectors: the UI offers it but nothing is active. Either remove the edit multiple button for vectors, or activate the fields

• UI changes
  • oxygen icons

• Various checks
  • check change data file tool
  • check remember last settings in various dialogs (data wizard, etc)
  • default names (plugins, etc...) + automatic labels (top-label) sometimes disturbing

• Small features
  • strings from data file or vectors to be shown in View->Strings dialog (as scalars)
  • more metadata (netcdf) - watch out for update problems + show in UI (View->strings)
  • ASCII units (216730)
  • tied zoom span tabs (221673)
  • SVG export (142986) - and EPS as well
  • File->Recent files... (252079)

• Misc
  • web site revamp + promotion work
  • full cmake support

2.0.4: Further polishing (released September 13th 2011)

• Bug fixes
  • distribution of points sometimes very uneven if show points density < all (272578)
  • datawizard jumping back to the top of the list
  • issues when dragging items in layout mode (254922 and 255274)
  • Legend items should be unique (272576)
  • Wrong point in PSDs with log scale (272580)
  • Scalar from scalar update problem (272577)

• UI
  • user-visible string changes (249805)
  • finish UI revamp (esp. context menus + connect plot dialog pages to the way the dialog is opened, e.g. double click on axes opens plot dialog in the right place)
  • scientific notation for extreme axis numbers

• Features
  • redo automatic plot layout algorithm
  • change scalar value directly in the scalar selection combobox
  • as-you-type search in comboboxes (vector selection)

2.0.5: More polish and some new features (released May 21st 2012)

• Bug fixes
  • PDF export vs PDFCreator (219845)
  • many small bugfixes (see http://kst-plot.kde.org/files/Log_messages_2.0.4_to_2.0.5.txt)

• Various checks
  • tab order

• Features
  • view items have an option to scroll/zoom with the contents of the plot
  • improve automatic plot layout algorithm
  • option to have anti-aliased plots
  • mouse wheel scrolls and zooms (261972)
  • Adding a drag and drop capability (272510)
  • data source should text box should handle ~/ as shortcut to $HOME
  • legends should be wrapped to always fit inside their plot
  • new datasource: Matlab .mat file reader (Matlab pretty much sucks at plotting, that'd be a pretty interesting move and there's a spec at http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/pdf_doc/matlab/matfile_format.pdf)
  • beta of python-based, mathplotlib-alike scripting (Linux only for now)

2.0.6: Bugfix release (released July 27th 2012)

One new feature: an option to interpret a vector as EXCEL time

Other than that, quite a few bugfixes:

• Loading/saving
  • When loading a kst file, prompt the user for an alternate if a datasource can't be found
  • Save/use arrow head property defaults
  • Don't invert Z order of viewItems which are direct children of the View
  • Line and arrow dimensions were sometimes very far off
  • Font and formatted text issues fixed

• Data import
  • Data wizard fixes (spectrum format, speed improvements when there are many vectors,
  • Properly handle missing data in custom-delimited ASCII to avoid mixing the vectors
  • Large speedup (x10!) for ASCII with very many columns

• UI
  • When leaving edit multiple mode, take the check boxes out of tristate mode
  • Allow SVG and pixmap view objects to have adjustable aspect ratios
  • Fix apply button in view item dialogs (including labels)
  • Add a help window for label formatting (formatted text is quite powerful, but a bit hidden)
  • Make sure the correct context menu is always shown

There was also quite a lot of work done on the compiling and packaging by Peter Kümmel. Hopefully this will help, even though python scripting is not yet available on Windows. A more comprehensive list of changes between 2.0.5 and 2.0.6 can be found here: http://kst-plot.kde.org/files/Log_messages_2.0.5_to_2.0.6.txt

2.0.7: Or will it be 2.1?

• 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)

• Features
  • scripting on all platforms
  • time-based range tools
  • ASCII read time in HH:MM:SS.sss format (243684+243445)
  • new curve placement widget missing tab selection
  • Declutter the data manager / find-as-you-type filter as in kst 1.x (257164)
  • jump to next marker
  • equations and plugins should no longer generate X slave vector (272575)
  • layout mode span tabs
  • Capability to insert scalar in x/y markers (257153)

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
  • command line switches + full batch operation
  • ASCII configs (216744)
  • ASCII could have an "auto format" mode which uses heuristics to detect the format
  • more capable vector view with more display formats and multiple simultaneous vectors (257285, 257287) - see labplot/scidavis/origin
  • feedback during loading of large documents (92868+92870)
  • 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

• plugins (including easy "basic plugins" a la kst 1.x and 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...)
• ...