Releases to date have been as follows:
tabular environment now available.compress now work
(as well as gzip and bzip2).-demo starts up with demo data.-disk" flag allows use of disk backing storage for
large tablesIn addition, the following incompatibilities and changes have been introduced since the last version:
-f" flag). FITS files and VOTables can
still be identified automatically (i.e. it's not necessary to
specify format in this case) but ASCII tables cannot:
you must now specify the format when loading ASCII tables.
This change allows better error messages and support for
more text-like formats.jel.classes"
and "jel.classes.activation",
not "gnu.jel.static.classes".Secondly, the provision of load dialogues has been modularised, and a number of new dialogues provided. The new ones are:
startable.load.dialogs system property.
The appearance of the Load Window has changed; now only the File Browser button is visible along with the Location field in the body of the window, but the DataSources menu can be used to display other available table import dialogues.
topcat-full.jar and topcat-lite.jar.
The former is much larger than before (11 Mbyte),
since it contains a number
of classes to support custom load dialogues such as the MySpace
browser and web service interaction, as well as the SoG classes.
The latter contains only the classes for the core functionality,
and is much smaller (3 Mbyte).
topcat -help is now more comprehensive,
describing briefly what each option does and listing system
properties as well as arguments/flags proper.
In addition, the save dialogue now displays the current row subset and sort order - this makes it easier to see and/or change the details of the table you're about to save.
exec functions which execute commands on the local
operating system-verbose (or -v)
flag one or more times you can get those messages back.
The messages (in fact all logging messages at any level)
can also be viewed from the GUI by using the new
File|Show Log menu option from the
Control Window.
tablecopy tool is no longer covered in this
document; it is replaced by the tcopy tool in
the separate
STILTS package.
There has also been some reorganisation of this document, mainly
in the appendices.
-version flagNULL_ test on the first column of a table.Times class.RANDOM special function.null" interpreted as a blank value in ASCII
tables.roundDecimal and formatDecimal functions
introduced for more control over visual appearance of numeric values.Some non graphics-related improvements have also been made as follows:
-soap
flag on the command line. This facility may be withdrawn in
future versions, in view of the fact that the PLASTIC service
can provide similar functionality.
showObjects message,
it now checks if a matching subset exists rather than always
creating and adding a new one. If it does, it just sets current
the existing one. This can cut down (a bit) on proliferation
of Row Subsets.file: scheme sent by TOPCAT in
PLASTIC messages now correctly conform to RFC 1738.-Dmyspace.cache=true to speed it up at the
expense of accuracy.
ivo://votech.org/votable/highlightObject message.csv-noheader output format.votable-fits-href and
votable-binary-href format tables from the file
browser.mark.workaround system property,
see Section 10.2.3.startable.storage policy "sideways")
have been introduced.
These can provide considerable efficiency improvements for
certain tasks when working with very large (and especially wide)
tables.
ivo: or myspace:
URLs is now provided - see new Section 4.2.toHex and fromHex numeric
conversion functions.-J flag to topcat startup script
for passing flags directly to Java.ivo://votech.org/votable/loadFromURL message.sinh, cosh, tanh and inverses)
Maths class
(sinh, cosh, tanh and inverses).Graphics upgrades
) button,
which is useful on small screens.
param$ notation (Section 7.3),
and both columns and parameters can be referenced by UCD using
ucd$ notation (Section 7.1).
Receving a row subset from PLASTIC in this way, and certain other actions, now cause the subset to be shown straight away (and updated if necessary) on any existing plots, which makes this kind of PLASTIC interaction more responsive.
The size of each subset, and also the corresponding percentage of
the table it represents, is now calculated automatically and
displayed in the Subset Window.
The old behaviour of only calculating sizes on request can be
reinstated using the Autocount rows (
)
menu item if required.
) button is provided
in the Cartesian and
spherical 3D plots which allow
you to keep the Z axis/north pole vertical during rotations.
formatDecimalLocal() functions in
class Formats.fluxToLuminosity and luminosityToFlux
functions in class Fluxes.gcj).TNULLn header
cards - write them as numeric not string values.
) button to assign a column containing label text.
)
button in the dataset toolbar to enable it.
) button in plot windows
determines whether a legend will be displayed next to the plot.-exthub flag which starts a new external
PLASTIC hub.-stilts convenience flag so you can easily
run STILTS from a TOPCAT installation.fluxToLuminosity
function..starjava.properties
file.datatype attribute.
)
to Histogram Window.-disk flag is now honoured when loading
tables from JDBC, which makes it possible to input larger
datasets from RDBMS.-plastic command-line flag.
Although much of the messaging behaviour remains the same,
various improvements to the GUI accompany this change:
) toolbar button in
Control Window, which pops up new
SAMP Window
-version command line flag now reports subversion
revision as well as symbolic version number.fits-basic output
handler as signed byte values (TFORM=B,TZERO=-128)
rather than signed shorts (TFORM=I).file:-type URLs
containing %xx escapes.-sia and -ssa for
-siap and -ssap command line flags.TFORMnn=rAw)
is now understood for FITS binary tables.-noserv flag.load.table messages now use
the name parameter, which gives a better chance of a
useful human-readable name being attached to transmitted tables.java -jar.topcat -stilts from standalone jar
can now correctly report starjava revision.
In previous versions, when you selected a multi-extension FITS file or VOTable from one of the load dialogues or on the command line, only the first table contained in it would be loaded, and any others were silently ignored. Such files often only contain a single table, but not always. Now, if multiple tables are present in the container file, each one will appear as a new table in the tables list. Other table file formats are not currently affected, since there is no mechanism for storing multiple tables in, say, a CSV file.
A new section Section 6 has been added to the manual providing an introduction to the concepts of VO data access, and a new apendix section Appendix A.8 describes the various single- and multiple-query windows.
memory"))
unless the -disk flag was specified
(to use the "disk" storage policy), in which case it was
stored in temporary disk files. If you didn't put -disk
on the command line, it was common to run out of memory when working
with large tables.
Now, the default storage policy is "adaptive".
This means that relatively small tables are held in memory,
and larger ones are stored in temporary files.
The effect should be that most of the time, you don't need to
specify any special options, and you can work with small or
large tables without running out of memory.
Using -disk is still permissible, and may help in
unusual circumstances.
Running out of memory is still a possibility, but should be much
less common.
The old behaviour can be restored by using the new
-memory command-line flag.
The only differences you notice from this change should be good ones, however it is slightly experimental. Please contact the author if you suspect it has introduced any problems.
jsamp.*
system properties.-jsamp command-line flag has been added
for convenience so that the TOPCAT jar file can be used
easily as a JSAMP toolkit.votable.namespacing system
property.xtype attribute is now used to
try to identify columns containing ISO-8601 format dates,
which allows them to be treated as numeric values for
plotting etc.-tree,
-file,
-sql,
-cone,
-gavo,
-registry,
-sia,
-ssa)
have been withdrawn from use; they were probably not widely used,
and are of minimal usefulness with the new load window toolbar
buttons.parse* string->numeric conversion
functions now cope with leading or trailing whitespace.array functions for constructing arrays,
and new aggregating functions median and
quantile.malloc())
for intermediate-sized buffers
to avoid running out of java heap space.long" is recognised
in IPAC format tables.table.highlight.row message will no
longer cause a similar message to be sent back
(and similarly for the PLASTIC
ivo://votech.org/votable/highlightObject message).
The previous behaviour was an unwanted implementation side effect
which could sometimes cause problems in interaction with other
tools.Finally, from this release TOPCAT requires version 1.5 (a.k.a. 5.0) of the Java J2SE Runtime Environment; it will no longer run on version 1.4, which is now very old. I don't expect this to cause compatibility issues for anyone, but I'm interested to hear if that's not the case.
It has also enabled some related changes:
A few related bugs and idiosyncracies have been corrected at the same time.
voresource.loadlist{,.cone,.siap,.ssap} MTypes).coord.pointAt.sky MType).http://user:pass@host/path) on
table URLs handled.int overflow bug in FITS
MultiMappedFiles.-nohub flag on the
command line.
You can connect and disconnect with the hub by clicking the connection
logo at the right of the SAMP panel.
The JSAMP library is upgraded to JSAMP v1.2, which fixes one or two bugs and supports the experimental Web Profile, though Web Profile support is not switched on by default.