SPLASH v2.0-beta and v1.15.0 released
Daniel Price
I am very pleased to announce an official "beta-release" of the new SPLASH 2.0. This contains all the new features in 1.15.0 (see below), plus:
* New giza backend completely replaces PGPLOT
* Antialiased lines, real fonts, support for eps, pdf and svg drivers
* Fewer build dependencies, needs only standard system libraries (cairo, X11)
* Support for semi-transparent text
* TeX-like escape sequences in text strings (\alpha, \beta, ^{super}, _{sub})
* Double-rendering implemented (see attached example)
The 2.0-beta release is the same as 1.15.0 but with the default backend switched to giza (and giza included in the tar file).
Main new features in 1.15.0 are as follows:
* Multiplots can be set up with different particle types in different panels
* Calculated quantities list is now pre-filled automatically
* Preliminary support for r-phi and r-z rendering
* Outlined solid markers implemented [suggested by Thomas Maschberger]
* Better handling of multiple types
* Manual contour levels can be specified by creating a splash.contours file [contributed by Andy McLeod]
* "splash to grid" implemented in parallel
* Better support for non-square pixels
...plus plenty of bug fixes and other minor improvements
Both of these (though I strongly recommend you upgrade directly to the 2.0 beta version) are available from:
http://users.monash.edu.au/~splash/download.html
I have been using giza successfully for more than 6 months now, since our summer project spent developing it (many thanks to James Wetter for much of the initial work). There are some minor issues left to be ironed out, but as far as I am aware there are no remaining "show-stoppers", hence the beta release. If you download the beta version, *please* let me know how you get on. In particular, please report any troubles with details about your system and what you had to do (there are detailed installation instructions in the INSTALL file distributed with SPLASH and on the web page). Once these issues are ironed out, I will release an official v2.0.
*** Note to svn users ***
If you have a previous svn copy of splash, it will now want the giza backend by default. This is simple to obtain, simply checkout giza into a subdirectory of splash, i.e.:
cd splash
svn co https://giza.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/giza giza
then type "make" as usual. Alternatively, splash can still be compiled with the PGPLOT backend by specifying "make BACKEND=pgplot". However, I strongly recommend you adopt giza where possible!
Happy splashing!
Daniel
