KDE Science/Kst/roadmap

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

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)

2.0.2: Polishing

• Bugfixes
  • update fixes (plugin -> equation -> etc, dependencies not always updated)
  • PDF export vs PDFCreator (219845)
  • y-local zoom with shared axis box (236678)
  • update pb in the data manager (248888)
  • special characters escaping (250014)
  • 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
  • distribution of points sometimes very uneven if show points density < all
  • dimensions tab for line/arrow: x,y instead of length, angle
  • with many plots in a window and large axis numbers, the labels overlap
  • legends should be wrapped to always fit inside their plot
  • 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
  • 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)
  • legends in more prominent place in plot dialog (236473)
  • X-only zoom and Y-only zoom toolbar buttons (252080)

• Various checks
  • check change data file tool
  • check change multiple...
  • check remember last settings in various dialogs (data wizard, etc)
  • default names (plugins, etc...) + automatic labels (top-label) sometimes disturbing
  • undo/redo
  • tab order
  • tooltips + What's this
  • check less often-used plot types
  • features that need to be available from the command line (shared axis box?)

• Small features
  • strings from data file or vectors to be shown in View->Strings dialog (as scalars)
  • layout mode span tabs
  • tied zoom span tabs (221673)
  • SVG export (142986) - do we still need EPS?
  • File->Recent files... (252079)
  • datawizard jumping back to the top of the list
  • view vectors display format (eg long ints)
  • new curve placement widget missing tab selection
  • feedback during loading of large documents (92868+92870)
  • change scalar value directly in the scalar selection combobox
  • proper support or warning for files with non-unique field names (130195) Fixed?
  • scientific notation for extreme axis numbers
  • other formats for view vectors (e.g. for large ints)
  • data source should text box should handle ~/ as shortcut to $HOME

• Misc
  • begin web site revamp + promotion work
  • documentation

2.0.3: more new features

• ASCII configs (216744)
• ASCII units (216730)
• ASCII read time in HH:MM:SS.sss format (243684+243445)
• ASCII could have an "auto format" mode which uses heuristics to detect the format
• text box resizing (221823)
• filter items in data manager a la kst 1.x
• jump to next marker
• more metadata (netcdf) - watch out for update problems + show in UI (View->strings)
• cut/copy/paste
• as-you-type search in comboboxes (vector selection)
• in-line changing of axis ranges, if easy (118774)

2.1 Series: kst 1.x users can transition

2.1.0: Feature parity

• scripting (QtScript + dbus?)
• plugins (including easy "basic plugins" a la kst 1.x and plugin manager)
• command line switches + full batch operation
• save vectors to file (or embedded) (238923+...)
• read kst 1.x files, at least load the data and create data objects, layout may not be pixel-perfect

2.1.1: KDE integration (248184)

• icons
• file dialog
• cmake
• 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: 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)
• 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...)
• ...