GNUPLOT VERSION 4.4.0
	    ===================================

We are happy to announce the release of gnuplot version 4.4.
This version is a major release with significant new capabilities
and enhancements compared to the 4.2 releases.

Particularly noteworthy features include:

- smoother graphics based on the pango, cairo, and wxWidgets libraries
	New drivers:  pngcairo pdfcairo wxt

- client-side interactive display using the HTML 5 "canvas" element
	See:  http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo_canvas/

- better internationalization, support for UTF-8 character encoding

- support for transparency and alpha-channel image generation and handling.
  PNG images can be read in and manipulated as plot elements.

- extended command line syntax, including iteration
	e.g.:  plot for [i=1:10] foo(i)
	       plot for [file in "a.dat b.dat c.dat"] file 

- new plot styles:  circles rgbalpha 

A longer list of changes since the previous release is given in the NEWS file.
Full information is given in the ChangeLog.


		 NOTE TO PACKAGERS AND TESTERS 
		===============================

We strongly encourage you to build, test, and package the new cairo-based
terminals (output modes). These are pngcairo and pdfcairo for output to file,
and wxt as the default interactive terminal.

This introduces dependencies on
	libwxgtk2
	libpangocairo
	libpango
	libcairo
and various additional libraries in turn needed by these.

Of course the current terminals (output modes) used by previous gnuplot
versions are also still available, including png output based on libgd
and interactive output using X11.

Demo plots illustrating these and other features are online at

	http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo_cvs/

You can download a source tarball for gnuplot version 4.4.0 from the 
gnuplot development site on SourceForge.

	http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2055


		          OTHER NOTES
		===============================

Installation
------------
Installation instructions are available in the source itself; the short
version for linux/unix-like systems is to unpack the tarball and then
build it:
		cd gnuplot-4.4.0 ; ./configure ; make
test it:
		make check
install it:
		make install

Pay careful attention to the output of the ./configure script.
It may indicate that some output drivers have been omitted because the
necessary support libraries were not found.  In general you need to have
previously installed the "*-devel-*" versions of these libraries. 


Known issues
------------

- Mac OSX ships with a terminal input library that purports to be gnuplot
libreadline, but isn't really.  This confuses gnuplot's ./configure script.
Your options are either to install the real gnu libreadline, or to
explicitly select one of the other two input library options:
	./configure --with-readline=builtin    (comes with gnuplot source)
	./configure --with-readline=bsd        (NetBSD editline library)
We hope that this will be handled automatically in the final release 
version.

- The wxt terminal isn't quite working yet for OSX. We expect it to be
ready for inclusion in version 4.4.1

- The gnuplot build system is not very good at figuring out where to find
or install LaTeX-related files.  This can affect use of the new lua/tikz
terminal.

- Alpha-channel support in aquaterm requires aquaterm version 1.0.1,
available from http://aquaterm.sourceforge.net.  
Aquaterm itself may not work on 64-bit systems.

- External support library libgd version 2.0.36 introduces a new method
of font selection using the fontconfig utitily. We try to automatically
accommodate this, but it has not been extensively tested.

- The MS Windows terminal device sometimes draws with a dashed line
when it should draw with a solid line. (Tracker items 1952364, 1952287).
Also it doesn't yet fully support alpha-channel output.


Support
-------
Please report all bugs and installation problems to the bug tracker
on SourceForge:

	http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=2055&atid=102055

There is also an active gnuplot discussion forum on usenet group

	comp.graphics.apps.gnuplot

Development
-----------
Gnuplot development is quite active. The development branch on SourceForge
contains preliminary implementations of many new features.  The development
branch is currently identified as version 4.5.
Feedback and contributions of code are very welcome.

.