MC's PlotXY - History of fixes and improvements

BUG FIXES
AFTER THE JUNE 98 RELEASE:
- corrected problem (the program could even hang) when displaying
some perfectly constant plots
- corrected a problem that caused in some rare cases an error displaying
y-axis numerical labels. E.g., for an y axis with labels from 0 to 10, the
digit '1' of number "10" was not displaied.
- when a curve should be over one of the straight lines defining the plot border
it was not visible. Corrected
- Corrected a "violation access" problem arising when the user specified
manual scaling with values completely outside the actual ranges.
- When the user in multi-file mode had the file list full and, therefore, the lo
ad
button greyed, if he switched to single-file mode and again to multi-file mode
,
the load button was unduly active. Corrected
- After a printing job, and before a subsequent pressing of the plot button
the "cursor" and "Mark" buttons did not operate correctly. Fixed.
- corrected minor glitches arising when the user made unusual things
AFTER THE OCTOBER 98 RELEASE:
- corrected a poor color set that appared when the user specified a "Window"
desktop color different from white (results especially bad with grey)
- corrected a bug causing in some cases zoomed plots to be not correctly
exported in the clipboard using the "copy" button
- corrected a wrong initial position of the "Data Selection" or "Plot" windows
when the Win95/NT desktop had the taskbar visible at the Left-hand or right-ha
nd
side of the screen respectively.
- corrected all other bugs that have been reported to program maintenance
AFTER THE JAN 99 RELEASE:
- corrected a minor problem causing an error message in some rare circumstances
AFTER THE SEPT 99 RELEASE:
- Corrected a problem that caused the 8th variable non to be correctly removed f
rom the
Variable-X-Factor-offset table.
- The manual Mark function did not operate well when two different vertical axes
were
used; fixed.
- Corrected a problem arising when several operation of selecting/unselecting
variables were made, along with algebraic operations on some of the variables.
- When using NEWPL4=2 in the STARTUP file, and a FREQUENCY SCAN run used one of
the
following commands: POLAR OUTPUT VARIABLES, RECTANGULAR OUTPUT VARIABLES,
BOTH POLAR AND RECTANGULAR, the program hanged; corrected.
AFTER THE MAR 00 RELEASE:
- corrected minor bugs related to the use of the "Fourier" feature
- corrected a very rare bug causing strong errors on the plots
AFTER THE MAR 01 RELEASE:
- corrected a bug occurring when, in multi-file mode, the user switched to anoth
er file
while having never clicked the Reset button

- corrected a bug causing the height of the main window to be progressively rise
n
when the user opened the program several times in multi-file mode
IMPROVEMENTS
AFTER THE JUNE 98 RELEASE:
- The program is now able to read not only Pl4 files but also ASCII Data Files
- Plotting/printing speed improved (a strong improvement when variables with
several points are involved).
- Now a right-button mouse click unzooms zoomed plots (is equivalent to a
click on the Plot button)
- The Copy function has been improved, so that visually redundant points
are automatically discarded
- Now, if association is made in Windows Explorer between pl4 extension
and PlotXY double-clicking on a pl4 file causes it to be automatically
loaded inside PlotXY.
- Now, the files can be loaded not only by means of the Load button, but also
by means od the Drag-and-drop feature of Win95
- Now, if multiple instances of the program are run, the instance number is
shown in the program window's titles and icon's captions on the taskbar
- Resize of the plot Window was already allowed. However, it can now be made
not only larger but also smaller (up to a limit) than the default size.
- Now factors and offsets can be defined also for the X variable
- Now not only variables can be displayed, but also differences of variables
- The program documentation has been largely improved
AFTER THE OCTOBER 98 RELEASE:
- Now a title can be added on top of the plot
- The "Update after refresh" button has been added so that the user can choose
if after a refresh a Plot or a Update button click is to be simulated.
- A feature has been added so that not only simple variables but also
differences of variables can be displayed: this is particularity useful
when a branch or a line-to-line voltage is wanted and only node voltages are
available.
- The cursor to see numerical values is now available also for ASCII files
- Now an option is available to automatically generate the X (e.g. time)
variable for ASCII data files.
AFTER THE JAN 99 RELEASE:
- Now powers and energies are correctly identified (with recent versions of ATP)
- Now numerical scale factors on the axes are in the engineering instead of gene
ric
scientific format (10^3, 10^6, etc. instead of 10^1, 10^2, etc.).
If the user chooses this, when the program can reliably detect the variable
type the scale factors are reported in descriptive form such as t[ms], [kV],
[MW], etc.
- The possibility of adding comments to ADF files has been added
- Now the window sizes are correct even with unusual screen sizes such as
2048x768 available with some video cards (Matrox Millennium II)
- The plotting technique adopted was designed so that a one-pixel error was
tolerated. Now a new algorithm is used that avoids this error, but is less
efficient. The old algorithm is still available on request see "Command-line
parameters" on PlotXY.doc for details)
options to avoid this small error (at the expoenses of a speed reduction).
- The possibility of having plots with two independent scales has been added.
- Factors and Offsets are now reported (when necessary) on Clipboard and Printed
output
- The possibility to have automatic labeling (such as t[ms] or V[kV]) and to

have the time automatically displaied in minutes or hours has been added.
- The user can now select the option "Remember window's sizes and positions"
so that the size and positions of the two main program windows' are remembered
among different runs of the program.
- the capability of computing sums or products of variables has been added; the
capability of computing differences of variables has been improved.
- now the program is designed to work also with variable-step pl4 files (as
obtained using the CHANGE PLOT FREQUENCY command)
AFTER THE SEPT 99 RELEASE:
- Up to September 99 the pl4 file variables were considered as having fixed
timestep. Since the timestep can be changed (e.g. with the CHANGE PLOT
FREQUENCY command) they are now treated (with negligeable additional
cpu consumption) as variable-step variables.
- The FOUR (Fourier Coefficients) function has been added.
- Due to an improvement of the inner algorithms, it is not needed anymore to
tolerate a one-pixel error when plotting at maximum speed.
- Interpretation of the variable names of FREQUENCY SCAN runs has been improved
(only for PISA, i.e., NEWPL4=2, format).
- The possibility of specifying the name of the authomatically generated x-varia
ble
in an ADF file has been added; this way the possibility of authomatically labe
ling
this variable in seconds (or minutes or hours) is introduced.
AFTER THE MAR00 RELEASE:
- The FOUR function has been improved in several ways:
. now vertical scales are visible on the plots
. now the bar charts can be zoomed in the same way as the line plots
. now it is possibile to copy in the clipboard either the numerical values
of amplitudes and phases or one or both of the bar plots; The THD is also
computed and exported along with numerical values
- Now the windows' sizes can be more flexibly set by means of the "use small win
dows"
option
- Reading compatibility with Matlab and IEEE COMTRADE files has been added.
AFTER THE MAR01 RELEASE:
- Capability to read Binary IEEE COMTRADE files has been added
- Automatic detection of ATP Harmonic Frequency Scan (HFS) runs is implemented;
Single-variable plots of HFS files now are bar charts instead or limn plots
- Possibility of using commas as separators in ADF files has been added
- The option of Associate Factors and Offsets to Variable names has been added.
Using this option, the user can avoid to repeat the operation of directly keyi
ng
the numerical value of factors and offsets when selecting a variable having th
e same
name of a variable previously selected
- The possibility to add individual shifts to times in Multi-file mode has been
added.
- Now ADF files that can be read from MATLAB can be created: simply use first ro
ws blank
or containing a comment begining with character '%', and "%t" instead of "t" f
or time
AFTER THE JUNE02 RELEASE:
- The number of files that can simultaneously be managed has been changed from 3
to 8
AFTER THE DECEMBER 02 RELEASE:

- The "Program Options" window has been redesigned so that it can now contain,
in a very accessible way, much more options.
- The possibility to manually choose the font size of numerical labels on the ax
es
and the legend text has been added
- The possibility to choose between thin and thick plot lines has been added
- It is now possible to choose between line charts and bar charts for Frequency
Scan
and Harmonic Frequency Scan runs
- Now it is possible to ask for logarithmic scale on X and/or Y axis of plots
- Now the decimal separator of the numbers on the axes is the one chosen in the
Windows'
Control Panel (and not always the char '.'). This is particularily important s
ince
recently ISO/IEC standards have decided to uuse the char ',' as standard decim
al
separator
- The possibility of saving the selected variables in an output file (having ADF
or matlab
format) has been added.