This is the NEWS file for PHPlot, with release documentation.
The project web site is http://sourceforge.net/projects/phplot/
The project home page is http://phplot.sourceforge.net/
Refer the the ChangeLog file for detailed source changes.
See NEWS_part1.txt for older release documentation.
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2012-01-02 Release 5.6.0

=== Overview:

This is the current stable release of PHPlot. This release includes
significant changes to pie charts. There are new ways to label pie charts,
and PHPlot does a better job calculating the size and positioning the labels.

The PHPlot reference manual has been updated to match this release.


=== Cautions, Important Notes, and Compatibility Issues:

Pie charts will change appearance when you upgrade to PHPlot-5.6.0 from any
previous release. This is due to changes resulting from bug #3403297,
described below. You may notice these changes:

1. The pie chart itself will usually be drawn larger, taking up more of
   the image. This may result in interference with a plot legend.

2. Pie chart labels will be closer to the edge of the pie, if you are letting
   the label positions default. If you are using SetLabelScalePosition() to
   set the label positions, the results may vary even more.

3. Text alignment on pie chart labels will change.

4. World Coordinates are now undefined with pie charts.

If you are producing pie charts with PHPlot, you should review the output
of your scripts before using PHPlot-5.6.0 in production. If the output is
not acceptable, one or more of these steps might help:

1. If pie charts are too large, and/or interfere with a legend, try moving the
   legend. Alternatively, use SetPlotAreaPixels() or SetMarginsPixels() to
   limit the plot area.  Note, however, that starting in this release PHPlot
   sizes the pie so the labels fit inside the plot area too. You can control
   this with SetPieAutoSize().

2.  If you want labels positioned just outside the pie chart, do not call
    SetLabelScalePosition(), or set the value to the default 0.5. If you want
    labels just inside the pie, use 0.49. If you want labels to be about
    half-way inside the pie, use 0.25. (In previous releases, PHPlot multiple
    the label scale position by 1.2 before using it to position the labels,
    but this was not documented.)

3.  Your pie chart script will report errors if you use GetDeviceXY(),
    SetLegendWorld(), or SetLegendPosition(...,..., 'world'). This is because
    these functions require world coordinates, and world coordinates are not
    defined for pie charts. (Previous releases did define a world coordinate
    space for pie charts, but the values were meaningless.)



=== Bugs Fixed in 5.6.0:

#3403297 Pie chart sizing and label issues:
In addition to the fixes listed here, new features were added as a result
of this bug fix (see New features below).

+ Use both width and height of the pie when calculating its maximum size.
  (The bug was that the pie diameter would be sized to fit in the smaller
  of the image width and height. But a shaded pie is oval, so when the width
  if the pie was sized to the height of the image, the pie was too small.)

+ Fixed the text alignment of pie labels so they extend more naturally
  away from the pie chart (if outside the pie). (Don't just use center/center
  alignment for all labels.)

+ Do not multiply the label scale position by 1.2 in the hope that this will
  prevent labels from overlapping the pie. Use the label scale position
  as intended, and take other measures to prevent label overlap (such as
  fixing the text alignment).

+ Label positions along the bottom of the pie are now adjusted to account for
  the pie shading depth.

+ Plot area borders now work with pie charts. Use SetPlotBorderType() to
  enable them. The default is not to draw borders.

=== New features in 5.6.0:

A number of new features were added as a result of bug #3403297, described
above. The new features are:
+ Use the new function SetPieLabelType() to select the type of pie labels
  to be displayed. Labels can show segment percentages, segment values,
  string labels, or any other value using a custom function.

+ SetPieLabelType() also allows control over formatting of pie labels,
  similar to the way X and Y tick and data labels can be formatted.

+ Plot labels can be suppressed with SetLabelScalePosition(0).

+ The aspect ratio of shaded pies can be controlled with a tuning variable
  $pie_diam_factor. The default remains 0.5, making the pie height equal to
  half its width.



#413925 Table of values:
This very old feature request was implemented by adding a new script to the
"contrib" directory.  The data_table.php script contains a function to draw
a simple table of values on a PHPlot image. Examples are provided.


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For older releases, see NEWS_part1.txt
