Autoplot Application (#{tag})

Craig had out a nice bug where the em offsets in the layout resulted in code
misidentifying overlapping plots, and the layout would be destroyed. Also outside labels are coming, along with a
number of features available below controller nodes in the DOM that are not saved in .vap files.
Autoplot attempts to allow plotting of data from many data sources, including local files and OpenDAP servers.
Datasets are identified with URIs, and by the URI's extension a module is used to load the data into the internal data model. Data is then
displayed by guessing the rendering method and axis ranges to provide a reasonable, useful view of the data.
This is the Autoplot2011 branch. Its feature set is finalized and will soon be the production branch.
Single-jar version, autoplot.jar, can be run without network access and from the command line. Note CDFs are only supported
via the Java-based reader and Autoplot will attempt to use it when the C-based version is not available.
Bugfixes:
- 3441461: plotx with multiple parameters
- 3441434: data post processing stays insensitive, basic mode
- 3444673: Remote bookmark files can be cached so loading is only done when necessary
- 3198392: remote bookmarks loaded immediately and on event thread. Show local first, then load remote 10sec later
- 3440253: consider filesystem caching in memory vs .listing files. Http file systems now cache listings on disk.
- 3373605: avoid null use in the DOM.
- 3399323: Background and foreground colors do not update on style tab.
- 2997820: Clean up automatic insertion of timerange so that 2010-01-01 is not used when it was never entered
- 3448593: Craig's overlap/add plot bug. Add/delete additional plot would destroy layout because em offsets were ignored when identifying overlaps
Older Bugfixes:
- 3430414: sc->getCompletions null when complete
- 3440253: consider filesystem caching in memory vs .listing files
- aggregation didn't allow wildcards like (.*) to be used, now it does.
- 3395693: FTP filesystem caching assumed a static remote site, now new listings are made up to once every 20 seconds (as with http)
- Ops.interpolate preserves metadata
- fill not identified in Ops.magnitude
- Operations pipeline correctly handles metadata by dropping external metadata for unsupported functions. Before we would just ignore them, so data and metadata would not match up.
- 3436569: Double-slicing (Rank 4 to Rank 2, |slice2(0)|slice1(0)) would not be properly reported in Operations field
- 3436922: in slicing of SpaceWeather(20,8,3) where changing the slice wouldn't reset properly
- 3436911: in automatic slicing of vap+inline:ripples(20,8,3). Adjusting slice index wouldn't adjust child slices.
- bugfix label of in-line dataset in rich ASCII files
- Spectrogram render type correctly restored from vap file. Before the renderType node would get close, but NoInterpolate mode would not work.
- 3437327: two column csv without time location units wouldn't plot as it would have with the AsciiDataSource, now it does.
- 3438527: getViewWindow() returns null after second is closed
- 3439598: CDF variable with three channels having same name
- bugfixes with remote bookmarks, when remote folder contains other remote folders
- in applot.pro, check for NaN's before byteswap
- in IDL/Matlab bridge, error reporting is improved.
- logic for guessing timerange supports non-aggregating data sources, and guesses before entering GUI.
- expert/basic mode code accidentally turned overplot button back on in add plots GUI.
Features:
- 3446504: separate open file into open vap file and open data file
- 3154463: restore vap to correct size when loading. Prompt if the product is too big scale or scrollbars
Less recent features:
- remote bookmark folders are allowed to be cached using the normal mechanism, if they come from a simple web folder
- Java Webstart supports "single instance", so relaunching will recycle running app instead of opening a second window
- rfe 3433860: Data operations can contain both component and process string, as in "Bx|histogram()"
- slices function introduced, to clarify high-rank slicing. |slices('',16,4) instead of |slice1(16)|slice1(4)
- Greek and Math symbols added to the font chooser dialog sample text
- TimeSeriesBrowse used to initialize GUIs.
- more findbugs cleanup of source code.
- python codes can convert strings like "10 nT" into datasets. e.g. ds+'10 nT' works now.
- <update check="background"> should speed up launch a little more
- ask before quitting when "close" is pressed and this is the last panel
- popup menus for axis tab show macros like %{RANGE}
- processed data result (e.g. after slicing) is shown on metadata tab. (Buggy)
- values in metadata tab are now the first twenty and last three values
Known issues:
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 www.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)
- Binary files (.bin)
- CDF files(.cdf)
- Excel spread sheets (.xls)
- das2Streams (.d2s or .das2Stream)
- ViRBO's TSDS server
- QStreams (.qds), QDataSet on a das2Stream
- Plasma Wave Group das2 Server
- NetCDF files (.nc,.ncml)
- HDF5 files
- DODs servers (.dds)
- Cluster Exchange Format files (.cef)
- Fits Format Files
- Images (.jpg, .png, .gif)
- Wav audio files
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.