General Notes on Version 0.2.

4:
This release contains some major and minor bug-fixes. I also included several im
provements:
- the slider-values are now editable (click on the value, enter a new number and
press enter)
- a nonlinear fit can be done on one set as usual; if more then one source-set i
s selected the data of the different sets will silently be combined and the fit
will be done on the combined sets (the combined set will not be visible, only th
e fit-result)
- there has been a bug in the filter-dialog, which made the interpolation the on
ly usable option in the point extension (it was possible to select something els
e, but internally always interpolation was used); I removed the bug and included
an option to extend the points with the first and last point before the first p
oint and after the last one
- I included a new help-page especially for the extensions in QtGrace in compari
son with Grace (I removed the respective entries in this readme) and I included
a new example especially for data-filtering and edited some of the existing exam
ples to better match the new window-layout and some of the new features. There i
s also a new example for the advanced scripting options
- I extended the command-window in order to execute all commands with different
set-ids and included special command for regression and filtering and some speci
al operations (see the new help-page concerning the QtGrace-extension for any de
tails)
- I made the decimal separator selectable (',' or '.') throughout the whole Gui
of QtGrace (internally '.' is used all the time) - please note, that this is now
a strict setting: if you select ',' as separator you have to enter every number
with ',' as separator as well and '.' is ignored.
- I extended the support for non-ascii-character by improving the usage of QtFon
ts (activate it in Preferences->Extra); you also have to set the encoding for sa
ving in the Extra-Preferences (UTF-8 recommended) - this feature is the most com
plicated in the internal processes and may still contain some bugs, so be watchf
ull and save early and often; there is obviously a limited compatibility with th
e original Grace if you use this feature (details: see new help-page)
- some minor stuff I do not remember in every detail has been changed / improved
(for example I included a bugfix from Grace 5.1.23 concerning the fit-results)
(Just an excuse for not updating QtGrace earlier or not having included more new
features: The compiler on my Windows7-system stopped working after a regular Wi
ndows update. I tried several different things to get it working again, but ther
e still remains an error in some basic library concerning a typedef with a point
er which I do not understand. I spent more time trying unsuccessfully to resolve
this problem than I spent actually doing improvements on QtGrace. This made me
very frustrated! Furthermore I tried to update QtGrace for the use with Qt5. Thi
s did also not work as expected and especially on Windows I could not get it to
work properly. Therefore I dropped the support for Qt5 for the moment, although
QtGrace should be prepared for it. This whole procedure also cost me valueable t
ime and made me frustrated and therefore I was not as motivated as before. With
Qt5.1 it seems to be easier to compile QtGrace - but I have not tested this any
further (it works on Mac OS X 10.9 but only using XCode and not QtCreator).)
One further request (as always): If you find bugs or missing feature or if you h
ave suggestions for improvements: Let me know immediately!
Thank you!
Warning: I changed some of the shortcut-keys in contrast to Grace: In order to u
se Crtl+Z for Undo I used Alt+Z for Zoom. In order to use Crtl+V for paste-opera
tions I used Alt+V for viewport.
I hope this will be helpful to someone. Don't hesitate to report bugs/suggestion
s/wishes.
General Notes on QtGrace:
Dear User or Developer;
Thank you for your interest in my Qt-version of Grace!
In case you do not know already: Grace is a program to plot data and analyze it.
Grace is based on xmgrace / xmgr and uses the motif-framework for the graphical
user interface.
The Grace-website is: http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/
QtGrace is based on grace-5.1.22 but uses the Qt-framework (formerly by Nokia, n
ow Open-Source) as a graphical user interface instead (Qt and their respective l
ogos were formerly trademarks of the Nokia Corporation but are now Open-Source a
s far as I know).
Although I have tested QtGrace for quite a while now there may still be some pro
blems / bugs present. Therefore give it a try, but be sure to read the Grace doc
umentation (and save often).
I hope this will be useful to someone else as well (I like my Qt-version of Grac
e :-) ).
My motivation: I had problems using Grace on different operating systems. Since
I had written some applications using the Qt-framework (which can be found on ht
tp://qt-project.org/) I decided to modify the latest stable version of Grace (5.
1.22) and replace all dialogs by equally looking Qt-replacements. I wanted to co
nserve the "look and feel" of Grace 5.1.22 because I wanted all Grace-users to b
e able to work with QtGrace immediately without having to adjust their workflow.
I altered most of the source-files and therefore changes in Grace have to be imp
lemented manually. Since there seems to be no major development around Grace-5.1
.22 I believe that this approach is acceptable for now. All development on Grace
seems to be focused on version 6 (or 5.99) which has a fundamentally different
internal architecture. QtGrace is not compatible with Grace 5.99. There are othe
r implementations of Grace 5.99 with newer graphic-libraries (like Qt and GTK) -
just do a websearch if you want these.
This version 0.2.4 of QtGrace is capable of nearly all of the operations Grace 5
.1.22 is able to do. Some minor functions are missing or work only on some platf
orms (see below). I have inserted a few extra functions I found helpful (see hel
p-page on QtGrace-Extensions). There are a few minor known problems (see below).
The internal procedures are the ones from Grace 5.1.22 (internal data management
, calculations and so on). I have only recreated the user interface in Qt which
makes it possible to compile QtGrace natively (!) on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
. You can load your old Grace-project files (usual extension: '.agr'). With Qt i
t is also possible to easily translate the user interface and make the language
of the interface selectable (I have made an attempt for a test-translation to Ge
rman. The file is included but very far (!!) from being complete. If there is so
meone out there willing to complete the german translation or generate a transla
tion to any other language feel free to do so using the "Linguist" program inclu
ded in the Qt-installation. If you send me the translation I will include it int
o the downloadable zip-file.).
Don't alter the structure or remove content from the folders of QtGrace. The exe
cutable relies on the relative positions of the files it needs. Just use symboli
c links to start QtGrace from your desktop.
I am always interested in hearing your opinion on QtGrace or in your bug-reports
. Suggestions for improvements are welcome as well!
To contact me please use email: andreas.f.winter@web.de
I hope you enjoy QtGrace!
Best regards
Andreas Winter (andwin)
Copyright and License-Terms:
Copyright (C) 2008-2013 by Andreas Winter
andreas.f.winter@web.de
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
How to build QtGrace:
QtGrace is based on the Qt-Framework which has to be obtained via http://qt-proj
ect.org/.
Please use at least version 4.6 (or newer; I am not sure about Qt5 or higher, it
should work but I have not tested it extensively - sorry) of Qt to compile QtGr
ace!
Please install the Qt-SDK which includes the Qt-Creator IDE. If you are an exper
ienced developer, you may also be able to compile QtGrace without the Qt-Creator
, but I will not describe how to do so here. (On Mac OS X 10.9 with Qt5.1 you ma
y have to use XCode 5 or you will have no debugger. In order to do so you have t
o generate a XCode-project file using qmake - see help-pages of Qt.)
Since you have extracted this folder you may notice, that there are some sub-fol
ders. It is important for QtGrace to keep the structure of this folder in order
to find some files at runtime. I have also included the original source-code-zip
-file from grace-5.1.22 as a tar-archive. You will not have to extract it. This
is included just for completeness and for developers use in case someone needs i
t.
I assume in the following part, that you have installed Qt and you have got a fu
lly functional Qt-Creator.
To compile QtGrace:
First step: Open Qt-Creator and do File->"Open File or Project..." (you may have
to specify the file format as "Qt Project file (*.pro)"). Select the file "src.
pro" in the 'src'-sub-folder. On the left hand side of the IDE-window you should
now be able to see all source-files that are part of QtGrace.
Second step: At the left hand side of the Qt-Creator-window you find some icons.
Click on the "Projects"-icon and make sure a suitable path for the Qt-Installat
ion is set at the general section. (You may have to consult the Qt-Manual on som
e systems on how to do so correctly. Especially in newer versions of QtCreator y
ou have to prepare the compiler settings in a special way, so please consult the
Qt-documentation.) You have two options now: either set the build-path in the g
eneral build settings to the 'bin'-subfolder or remember the build path that has
been set automatically and copy the executable after the compilation to the 'bi
n'-subfolder. You will also have to set the destination of the executable to be
executed from within Qt Creator in the settings in order to run QtGrace after th
e compilation from within Qt Creator.
Third step: Click the 'Edit'-icon on the left side. Click on the 'Build All'-Ico
n (the one with the hammer in the left hand lower corner). This will initiate th
e process of compilation and may take a while. You may also see a few thousand w
arnings which can be ignored (hopefully) but there should be no errors (if you g
et errors, report them to me and I will provide information on how to solve this
problem). (Special platform specific notes: see below)
Fourth step: Everything has been compiled now and you should be able to start Qt
Grace. Either you double-click on the qtgrace icon (or qtgrace.exe) in the bin-f
older or you set the execution path in the project settings to this file and run
it from within the Qt Creator.
Done!
On Windows:
You have to set the path to the Qt-dlls in your PATH-variable or copy the dlls t
o the bin-folder (look for 'QtCore4.dll' and use the path thereof). Otherwise yo
u can only run qtgrace from within the QtCreator. (You need the following dlls:
QtCore4.dll, QtGui4.dll, QtNetwork4.dll, mingwm10.dll, libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll; The p
ath where they can be found is usually something like 'C:\Qt\2010.05\qt\bin\' or
'C:\Qt\4.8.3\bin\'.)
On Linux:
If you continue getting messages like: invalid viewport coordinates --> please c
ontact me.
On Mac OS X:
Executables are organized as disguised folders on such systems. Therefore after
compilation in order to work in a MacOS-way you have to open the package-content
s of qtgrace (right-click on qtgrace in the 'bin'-folder and select 'show packag
e contents'). Then go to 'Contents'. Copy the contents of the original unzipped
folder except the 'bin'-subfolder and the grace-5.1.22.tar.gz into this 'Content
s-folder'. Copy the contents (except 'qtgrace') of the 'bin'-subfolder into the
'MacOS'-folder. Now you should be able to execute qtgrace by clicking on qtgrace
in the 'bin'-subfolder. It should also be possible to move/copy qtGrace in ever
y folder you like just like any other MacOS-application (put it for example in y
our Applications-folder).
Known Problems:
- Printing directly to a printer via the native printer-dialog is possible but I
have not tested it extensively (but it seem to work in an acceptable way). Most
settings are not mirrored in the native dialog. Direct printing without the nat
ive printer-dialog is only possible on systems that support the 'lpr' printing c
ommand (or any other printer-command like 'kprinter' on some linux-systems) and
accept postscript files (i.e. a system command like 'lpr file.ps' will actually
print the contents of 'file.ps' on the standard-(line)-printer). Printing to fil
es is always possible. You have to physically print the file-contents via a diff
erent/external program (like OpenOffice). You may also copy the whole page in th
e clipboard via View->PageSetup and paste it into your external program. Printin
g on Mac-system without a physical printer present can be tricky if you use Qt5
- sorry (previously the pdf-option was always accessable)
- On some Linux-systems the scrollbars are not displayed correctly but they stil
l stay usable (I don't know why, yet. Seems to be a Qt-problem...; I also don't
know whether this bug is still present, since I have not seen it in a while).
- On Windows systems the usage of the internal html-viewer for help-files has be
en disabled (the option is present, but internally discarded). I had to do this,
because the webkit- and phonon-packages of Qt don't seem to work together on Wi
ndows. (For developers who want to give it a try: remove the preprocess directiv
es in 'replacement_main.cpp' at lines 1736, 1739, 1741 and 1750.) This may also
be true for some Linux-systems (In this case remove everything between the direc
tives mentioned).
- Pipes not working on Windows.
- The switching between Grace-fonts and QtFonts is not adviceable. It is possibl
e in most cases, but especially for the Symbol-font problems are to be expected
- sorry. This has several reasons especially with the ordering of characters in
the T1-Symbol-font in Grace and UTF-8-fonts. At the moment I do not know how to
solve this problem.
- Loading files (especially old ones) relies heavily on the encoding setting in
the Extra-Preferences-dialog. For loading example-files it is often adviceable t
o use the Latin1-encoding (or something similar). Newer file should contain the
encoding used during saving and should be loadable without problems.
Things that work in Grace, but not in qtGrace:
- I have rewritten the spreadsheet-editor. Therefore it may not work as you are
used to it (or maybe you won't even notice).
- I have written a simple text-editor for creating and editing sets. On Unix the
default in Grace is to open 'vi' ('Create new->In text editor'). This option is
not portable (at least not in a way I would like). I used an internal text-edit
or because this seems to be comfortable enough (suggestions for improvements are
welcome).
- The pipes may work a bit differently in QtGrace, because I could not include t
he 'pipe-contents-changed' signal into the main-application loop like Grace does
. Pipes also do not work on Windows, yet.
Additions to qtGrace (not present in Grace): see help-page on QtGrace-extensions
Pipes (I include this here and not in the help-file, because I do not want to ad
vertise this feature due to it's incompleteness):
The use of named pipes via the '-npipe' option or starting QtGrace in a pipe via
'-pipe' or opening a pipe from Data->Import->Ascii is supported now. The drawba
ck at the moment is: This does not work on Windows, yet. The usage of pipes is a
bit different on Windows and I have to find out how to reliably use them there,
sorry. Any helpful advice is welcome here!
For the pipes (also called "Real time input") I included a new window/widget. In
'Window->Monitor real time inputs...' you can see which pipes are currently mon
itored for input. You can also activate or deactivate the monitoring here via a
checkbox. Internally in order not to block the other operations of QtGrace the i
nput via pipes is not real time but in specified intervals. The time between upd
ates of the real time input can be set here. I set it to 1 second by default. Yo
u can also open and close pipes via this dialog. I hope this is helpful for some
people.
Any suggestions for improvements, any bug reports or other comments are welcome.
Thank you.
Version history:
v0.1.2 initial release on sourceforge.net
- I made a few silent updates to remove some more or less minor bu
gs
v0.1.2a bug-fix-release: major bug in "Arrange graphs"-dialog removed; a
djustments on the sliders (especially their resize-behavior); changes in the rou
tine for loading gracerc.user: this file is searched first in the working direct
ory, then in the directory of the executable and last in the users home director
y; special-tick-marks-problems solved
v0.1.3 bug-fixes: the transformation between word- and viewport-coordin
ates has been included in the objects-dialogs (boxes, ellipses ...); some of the
dialogs have text-lines in which usually numbers are entered (like the start- a
nd stop-values in the axis-dialog), now more of them accept parametric values as
well (like the constant PI), this is a feature of Grace that has been temporari
ly deactivated during the development phase of QtGrace and I forgot to reactivat
e it, this has now been done; the native-printer-dialog now uses the set page-or
ientation as a default;
Undo/Redo included (partially and experimental)
v0.1.3a hotfix for a severe memory-bug in the undo-function; undo is sti
ll unfinished and experimental
v0.1.4 first release with complete Undo/Redo; several bug-fixes of most
ly minor stuff
v0.1.5 several bug fixes and improvements on the repaint-system (which
is especially necessary for newer Qt-versions)
v0.1.6 some bug fixes; addition of immediate updates and support for si
mple LaTeX-type text-input
v0.1.7 minor bug fixes; addition of copy/paste and drag/drop; minor imp
rovements on automatic script generation
v0.1.8 bug fixes; several improvements; addition of color management; f
illing the area between sets; rotation of boxes and ellipses
v0.1.9 bug fixes(some severe ones); transparency added for printing in
files; spread-sheet editor rewritten
v0.2 Page-zoom, selecting multiple graphs for zooming, reactivating p
ipes (non-Windows-systems)
v0.2.1 Support for csv-import
v0.2.2 '-free' option and 'immediate update' reactivated, experimental
support for non-latin-characters and different fonts;support for multiple files
in binary import and the use of a trigger channel ; bug fixes
v0.2.3 minor bugfixes; print-command saved in preferences; selection of
odd or even set-ids; addition of fit-button for page-zoom-slider; minor changes
to improve UTF-8-support in file-paths
v0.2.4 several bugfixes (major and minor); further improvement in UTF-8
-support (very extensive internal changes); made decimal-separator selectable th
roughout the whole QtGrace-Gui; improvement in the script-generation (execution
of scripts with automatically replaced set-ids); slider-value made editable; QtG
race-help-page; QtGrace-examples
Have fun using QtGrace!
Best regards
Andreas Winter (andwin)