Autoplot Application (#{tag})

IDLSave file which sat for twenty years untouched can now be read into Autoplot. The IDLSave file was from an ancient IDL digitizer that was used to identify a reference point in images.

Autoplot allows plotting of data from many data sources, including remote CDF files and OpenDAP servers. Datasets are identified with URIs, and by the URI's extension, data are loaded into the internal data model. Data are then displayed by guessing the rendering method and axis ranges to provide a reasonable, useful view of the data. Data can then be additionally processed with other operations like smooth and FFT, and Jython scripting provides a capable programming environment.

This is the Autoplot v2020a branch. This is an update to the production version containing bugfixes and minor new features. Java 7 is now required. Java 8 will be required sometime soon.

Run with 4GB of memory (64-bit Java only): autoplot_4GB.jnlp

Single-jar version, autoplot.jar, can be run without network access and from the command line.

Mac DMG Release is available.

Bugfixes (2020-04-30 r24820):

• EnumerationUnits within a DataPointRecorder would cause problem when file was loaded and then additional points are added.
• corrections to IDLSav files containing structures with string tags.
• new make aggregation code would assume there wasn't already a question mark in the URI, creating URIs with two question marks.
• Provide feedback dialog now says "provide feedback" and not "error report"
• Runtime error dialog now includes the words "runtime error" since that seems to be what we call it.
• check for null USER_PROPERTIES and METADATA resolving macros, to avoid noise on stderr during transitional states.
• non-monotonic timetags would mess up expandToFillGaps process. Thanks, George!
• 2258: correction to $p, AM/PM field, where 12am and 12pm were mishandled.
• jython editor would incorrectly warn when xrange keyword was used in plot, this is not reassigning xrange function.
• 1682: further corrections needed for test143_002, where units were not initialized properly.
• support "r= where( county.eq('Cook') )" in Jython.
• psp_fld_l2_mag_SC_2018110400_v01.cdf?slice1=0 could not be FFTPower'd, because of CONTEXT_0 property. Thanks, Kristoff!
• interactions with CDAWeb so that only one connection occurs at a time, which was causing problems when .vaps with many CDAWeb URIs were loaded. Thanks, Bernie!
• 1682: .dat supports the case where all fields are quoted, which is allowed in CSV.
• 1682: .dat split function now has look-ahead regex to check for commas within quotes.
• 1682: .dat supports recStart
• 1682: .dat supports quoted fields containing newlines now.
• 1682: make sure .dat can handle all .csv so one reader can handle all ASCII files, ending years of confusion.
• fixed indexOutOfBounds with cross hair digitizer when all data was off canvas and snapping was on.
• AutoplotServlet uses https for third-party codes, so the thin client works again.
• LeafTrim didn't slice the properties properly, dropping DEPEND_1 when the vertical slice was used with spectrograms from AsciiTableDataSource. Thanks, Bill!
• AsciiParser had some path which would result in a parsable line but then would fail to create a DelimParser. Thanks, yumin!
• 714: corrections to yaxis locations for each pixel row.

Older Bugfixes:

• 2255: rfe711 was incorrectly implemented when appending two datasets. Thanks, Ivar!
• 0484: improve support for guessing aggregations, by looking at extent of digits and for constant digits. Thanks, Mike!
• 1146: condition where flipped axes and no yTagWidth guess would cause index out of bounds. Thanks, Mike!

Features:

• Units.createDatum(Datum) added, so that codes don't have to check for EnumerationUnits so much when ingesting Datums.
• IDLSav files allow X,Y,Z notation like the .mat (Matlab) files support. Automatically transpose array to make fit.
• Initial support for reading data from IDLSav files introduced.
• Jython editor goto line includes class declarations.
• more checks for valid URIs like FPE_1997_12_16_V01.CSV?&delim=;column=field20 where arg0 is "".
• add "pattern=" keyword to ascii file parser to support regular expressions parsing.
• tickValues property can contain control for minor tick count, like "+1hr/4" means minor ticks on 15 minute boundaries.
• 715: waveform data can contain TT2000 timetags for DEPEND_1, supporting Parker Solar Probe groups.
• NetCDF variable attributes are visible in USER_PROPERTIES, and long_name is used for label when nothing else is available.
• NetCDF GOES n,3 arrays are rendered as X,Y,Z components to match CDAWeb logic.
• ASCII table GUI allows selection of values to use for y-tags (depend1Values keyword). Thanks, Bill!

Less recent features:

• 714: other improvements to image data source, like showing plot titles in completions.
• 698: support read of old Matlab .mat files, containing rank 1 or rank 2 data and structures and datetime arrays. Thanks, Chris!
• 714: ImageDataSource clip=T switch allows aggregation of images containing plotInfo.
• 713: GitHub support now supports branches.

Known issues:

• see Source Forge
• Bugs often have a four-digit ID and can be reviewed with https://sourceforge.net/p/autoplot/bugs/<ID>/.
• Features typically have a three-digit ID and can be reviewed with https://sourceforge.net/p/autoplot/feature-requests/<ID>/.

This completes the feature set for the new production branch. No major features will be added before branching this version. A production branch will be started in a couple of weeks, and the "Start Autoplot" link at the top of autoplot.org will run this version. Feedback on the function and quality of this release is greatly appreciated!

Data is input from:

• ASCII files (.dat,.txt)
• CSV files (.csv)
• Binary files (.bin)
• CDF files(.cdf)
• Excel spread sheets (.xls)
• das2Streams (.d2s or .das2Stream)
• ViRBO's TSDS server
• CDAWeb data server (vap+cdaweb:)
• das2servers (vap+das2server:)
• QStreams (.qds), QDataSet on a das2Stream
• Plasma Wave Group das2 Server
• NetCDF files (.nc,.ncml)
• HDF5 files (.h5,.hdf5)
• DODs servers (.dds)
• Cluster Exchange Format files (.cef)
• Fits Format Files
• Images (.jpg, .png, .gif)
• Wav audio files (.wav)

This is not complete, and limitations include:

• Quantities of rank 3 dimensionality (e.g. flux(Time,Energy,pitch) are plotted by slicing.
• Quantities of rank 4 dimensionality (e.g. flux(Time,Energy,azimuth,sector) are plotted by slicing twice.

autoplot.org is the wiki website, and contains more information than this launch page.