TOPCAT/STILTS release

[Mark Taylor]

Hi topcat users,

this is to announce the following releases:

   TOPCAT v4.2-3
   STILTS v3.0-3
   STIL   v3.0-11

The main new thing is improvements to histogram-like plots (available
in topcat's Histogram or Plane plot windows, as well as from
stilts plot2plane command).  These now allow several variations on
the idea of a Kernel Density Estimate plot alongside traditional
histograms, as well as more options for bar height normalisation and
some alternative histogram bar representations (including a new default).

These enhancements have benefitted greatly from discussions on and
around the topcat-user mailing list, and I'd like to thank all those
who have contributed time and ideas to those discussions, with special
mentions to Hugo Buddelmeijer and Francois-Xavier Pineau.

Another useful new feature is the possibility to use unix pipelines
to preprocess byte streams providing table inputs to stilts,
for instance if you have a CSV-like file that uses semicolons rather
than commas as separators, you can now write:

   stilts tpipe ifmt=csv in='<sed s/;/,/g <data.ssv'

Exhaustive detail on the changes is available from the change logs.
Releases available at the usual places:

   http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/
   http://www.starlink.ac.uk/stilts/
   http://www.starlink.ac.uk/stil/

Thanks!

Mark

--
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-9288776  http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/