Autoplot Application (#{tag})

Photo of a woodpecker feeding through window screen has the effect of discretizing image.

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 v2021a branch. This is an update to the production version containing bugfixes and minor new features. Java 8 is now required.

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 (2021-01-06 r25429):

• ASCII files where header is parsed as data would cause noise as incorrect error was printed.
• clarify documentation for synchronizeNN that dss must each have monotonic timetags.
• rte 472115488: NetCDF editor panel had a path where positional parameter could end up null, causing RTE. Thanks, Shing!
• Run Batch "Load From File" action uses open dialog, not save dialog.
• "slices" filter GUI would reset improperly when the string was edited, causing flickering and occasional failure. Thanks, Shing!
• correction to support for CDF file psp_fld_l2_mag_RTN_1min[:,0];psp_fld_l2_mag_RTN_1min[:,1];psp_fld_l2_mag_RTN_1min[:,2], where slice is not implemented. Thanks, Jon N!

Older Bugfixes (2020-12-29 r25415):

• improve transparency of local files used with ro_cache.txt, where local files can be used to resolve remote files.
• 1310: --sandbox mode with "open vap file" now works on a Mac, which checked to see if the read-only folder was writable.
• 1687: scripts with first line was a multi-line setScriptDescription couldn't be run from the address bar.
• 1310: --sandbox command line option limits writes to ~/AUTOPLOT_DATA and /tmp.
• 2309: correction to DataPointRecorder when reading a file. Thanks, Sadie!
• always support "~/..." as a shortcut for home directory.
• 2309: correction to DataPointRecorder units change when emptied. Thanks, Ivar!
• 1779: copy/paste plot is more aggressive about trying to bind the pasted plot's x-axis to the timerange. Thanks, Bill!

Features:

• Units.nominal() introduced to avoid explicit use of EnumerationUnits: print Units.nominal().createDatum('Chicago')
• rfe681: handle 404 when creating filesystem where filesystem does not exist. 404 will return an error immediately, while 403 is allowed, assuming there will be no listing requested.
• das2 DasAxis and DasPlot have new opaqueBackground property, to study handling of label collisions.
• new whereSequence command quickly finds sequences occurring in rank 1 datasets, for use with file magic numbers.
• SpaseDataSource refactored to XMLDataSource delegate, to make way for improved PDS support.
• BufferDataSet now has AsciiDataSet, for numbers encoded within binary source using ASCII, useful with PDS data.
• rank0 labelsDataSet command should be used where old code would use dataset('Chicago'), which was allowed briefly.
• Run Batch now keeps track of the last file location (preference) with "Load From File" action, speeding up repeated runs.
• add rank 4 link command.

Less recent features:

• add --macUseScreenMenuBar, which uses a conventional screen menu bar on Macs.
• rebundle command allows subsetting and resorting of bundle datasets.
• support datumRange(5,10) in scripts. Thanks, Ivar!
• events bar supports lineStyle and lineThick properties, new opaque property disables default transparency. Thanks, Ali!
• getFile can have null passed in for the monitor, when the developer knows the load will be quick.

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.