Autoplot Application (20140204a)

More experiments with rendering look promising, but final changes for the rendering will have to wait for the 2014a production branch.

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 Autoplot2013b branch. This is an update to the production version containing bugfixes and minor new features. Java 6 is now required.

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:

• 1156: Scott's script shows that color scatter was broken in December
• timeSeriesBrowse resulted in timerange being added to scripts in jyds editor when it wasn't needed
• das2server delays loading icons. The way it was coded would block GUI until they were loaded
• Autoranging handles where lots of zeros are found in differences, which would cause problems
• 1137: back off recent changes after seeing it mucked up Jemmy tests (and interactive use by clients) with demo 5 (stack of series).
• All components are created on the event thread after observing occasional hangs on Linux. Reduce delay for creating layout, data and script tabs.
• Red squiggle used to indicate errors in the Jython editor, the old block offered no feedback when highliting.
• scripts are loaded off the event thread
• Jython data source editor would not handle RESOURCE_URI correctly.
• 1148: reference cache finally gets immutability right, by making dataset immutable before it enters the cache.
• 1145: just don't offer $Y$m01 as a completion. This was put in to support CDAWEB, and direct CDAWEB support lessens the need for this
• remove RANGE_CHECK because it would cause RTE when it's legitimate to query zero-length qube datasets for other dimensions
• automatic completions editor works for URIs that don't have a file, like vap+orbit:
• Application-Name and Codebase to manifest to get rid of warning messages.
• documentation popup on script editor works again.
• SortDataSet called with zero-length sort list is trivially okay.

Older Bugfixes:

• DataSetSelector focus on a mac made it easy to loose URI when using completions.
• 1144:"CDF URI needs an argument" still lingers (in webstart single-instance hander)
• bounds of axis annotation labels corrected, before there was a 50px kludge which would leave unnecessary whitespace to the left of labels
• code that flattens waveforms for SeriesRenderer picks a unit that improves precision
• calculate CADENCE in Reduction.reducexWaveform to correct lines connecting waveform bursts
• RPW Group's data looked bad with LANL NN rebinning because cadence detection failed. Pull out code that infers bins from ytags.
• catch more RTEs in Jython Script panel when using completions.
• 1142: remove old code that would reset the timerange when switching das2servers. This could break bindings.

Features:

• minor tweaks to the Bookmarks manager.
• drag on layout panel is shortcut for swap
• Allow smooth on rank 2 datasets, smoothing on the first dimension (usually time).
• internal rbsp orbits updated to 2014-02-03
• das2server lists folders separately from data sources.
• All CDF Global metadata now appears under "GlobalAttributes" node in metadata tab.

Less recent features:

• Improvements to the thin client
• Bookmarks logic allows users to review bookmarks before using them.
• Inline data source now has editor panel, with discovery.
• Example thin client code allows arbitrary .vap to be used

Known issues:

• see Source Forge

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.