Release Notes

3.2 - May 28, 2010

layouts:

• completely redesigned for reusable visualizations!
• networks - arc, matrix, force-directed, etc.
• hierarchies - dendrograms, sunbursts, trees, treemaps, circle-packing, etc.
• stack layout (stacked bars, stacked areas, streamgraphs, etc.)
• horizon graphs, bullet charts, and more!

interaction:

• resuable behaviors - drag, pan, resize, select, point, zoom!
• events property for controlling event capture

data:

• scales - quantile, root
• ticks - date ticks, custom tick counts, tick formatting
• stats - histogram, variance, deviation
• text formatting and parsing - dates, numbers, times
• particle simulation - constraints, forces, quadtree

marks and rendering:

• partial rendering - re-render only specific marks for faster updates
• anchors - no longer inherit by default, can be used across panels
• antialias property for crisp edges
• interpolate property supports “cardinal”, “basis” and “polar”
• tension, eccentricity and lineJoin properties
• dynamic images
• rules one-pixel wide and not antialiased by default

geo:

• geo scales for mapping latitude-longitude to x-y
• projections - Mercator, Gall–Peters, sinusoidal, Aitoff, Hammer

gitorious:

• source code in protovis repository
• website and documentation in docs repository

3.1 - October 6, 2009

• panels now support an overflow property; set to “hidden” for clipping
• linear and log scales support tick formatting
• ordinal scale supports pv.index accessor
• log scale invert supports negative values
• rendering no longer removes children, so as to avoid spurious events

3.0 - September 19, 2009

interaction:

• properties now behave consistently in event handlers
• use local variables or properties to modify display
• can redraw at any level of the scene graph
• event handlers on parent panels are inherited by children
• can set window location to simulate links
• mark.mouse to get mouse location

local variables:

• use def to define local state per mark (e.g., def("foo"))
• event handlers can override def values (e.g., this.foo(42))
• properties can query def values (e.g., this.foo() == 42)
• can also be used to define efficient property functions (e.g., scales)

scales:

• pv.Scales is dead; long live pv.Scale
• scales each have a domain (input data) and range (output pixels/color/angle)
• scales are stateful, not magical
• ordinal scales are categorical (discrete domain and range)
• linear and log scales are quantiative (continuous domain and range)
• by functionality, useful as a “view”
• support for ticks, interaction, and more!

colors:

• default coloring now uses parent rather than (magical) mark index
• brighter and darker operators
• named colors (e.g., pv.ramp("brown", "orange"))
• by functionality standardized
• HSL to RGB conversion bug fixed
• per channel override methods (e.g. color.red(0))
• pv.Colors now uses pv.Scale.Ordinal under the hood

layouts:

• treemaps!
• sunbursts!
• icicles!
• tree size function for determining node size / children
• stack: allows stacking of bars and areas (etc.) with customizable baseline
• grid: two-dimensional table of bars or panels (heatmap, e.g.)

properties:

• evaluated in the order they are defined, allowing dependencies
• defs are evaluated before properties; constants before functions
• default data property is [d] rather than [null], simplifying nesting
• significant performance improvements!
• width and height now supported on rules

data:

• pv.repeat for array repetition
• pv.random for random integers (or intervals)
• pv.log{,Adjusted,Symmetric,Floor,Ceil}
• pv.transpose for transposing two-dimensional arrays
• pv.Vector for 2D geometry
• pv.tree and pv.flatten for converting between tabular and hierarchical data

lines and areas:

• can be segmented for variable lineWidth, color, visibility
• segmentation can change dynamically (e.g., on mouseover tooltip refinement)
• see Napoleon's March and animated examples
• step functions!

anchors:

• now use a single class, pv.Anchor
• define properties like normal marks
• support for anchors on root panel / anchors on panels

performance improvements:

• separated rendering from building to allow pluggable renderers
• optimized evaluation of properties
• don’t wrap constants in functions
• “bind” phase caches inherited property definitions
• minimize SVG output
• job voyager is about 2x faster

bug fixes:

• much more robust rebuild + re-render
• panel stroke now goes over children (consistent with images, use bar otherwise)
• circle dots with large lineWidths now render correctly
• reverse property now more robut
• type attribute now inherited; controls rendering behavior
• better !JavaScript minification
• use typeof == "function" rather than instanceof Function
• internal scene graph structure changed to facilitate traversal
• panel left/top/right/bottom now consistent with other marks
• better support for Date.parse and Date.format

2.6 - July 16, 2009

documentation:

• ~2,800 lines of new inline documentation
• browse online at http://protovis.org/jsdoc/

marks:

• Area width and height default to 0 if null
• Bar anchors allow stacking of bars vertically or horizontally (see test 9)
• Rule anchors reuse Bar.Anchor implementation (see test 32)
• Label text-baseline vertical offset adjusted (see tests 27-29)
• Label text-baseline supports font-dependent units (e.g., ex and em)
• Image image property renamed "url"
• Image supports fill-style and stroke-style
• Panel rendering bug fixes, performance optimizations
• Mark title property (a.k.a. tooltips) support

color:

• more robust categorical color encoding (pv.Colors)
• new quantitative color encoding (pv.Ramp)

miscellaneous:

• pv.range supports negative step
• pv.parse bug fix for string literals
• removed undefined global (built-in since JavaScript 1.3)
• experimental scales (pv.Scale)
• experimental chart templates in the works; coming soon!
• preliminary test framework online at http://protovis.org/test/