Winplot (708K) for
Windows 95/98/ME/2K/XP/Vista (29 Dec 07)
29 Dec: A user called my attention to a couple of additional bugs --- oversights caused by my implementation of arrows five days ago. This one affected derivatives and disabled the 2D slider dialog, among other things.
28 Dec: The Guess window became the first unintended consequences of the arrow-enhancement of four days ago. It was crashing instead of opening. I think the problem has been fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience.
24 Dec: Many users have requested arrows at the ends of 2D graphs. These are now available for graphs with restricted domains, and are implemented by an extension of the ampersand code described in the Equa help text. At a user’s request, the tangent-normal-binormal vector triad (the Frenet frame) has been added to the 3D slider dialog.
19 Nov: The gamma function should reject nonpositive integer arguments, but it was not doing so reliably. It is better now. In the 2D Inventory, the prefix “indef” was missing from indefinite integrals. It has now been restored.
4 Nov: Activated a “busy” message for the tabling of DE trajectories.
1 Nov: Posted a Lithuanian version today. My collaborator, who has also created a Winplot
website, is looking for someone to assist her in translating the remaining English into Lithuanian. If you can help, contact Roma Greiciute or me.
24 Oct: In 2D, dotted gridlines were occasionally being replaced by solid gridlines. That bit of strangeness has been eliminated.
19 Oct: Fixed a 2D anomaly: when rotating implicit curves, the angle sense was being reversed. I hope that this did not cause too much confusion.
14 Oct: The Portuguese version is now up to date.
10 Oct: The Germian version is now up to date.
1 Oct: The Hungarian version is now up to date.
29 Sep: The Slovak version is now up to date.
28 Sep: Fixed a bug created on 9 Sept. The gradient of a 2D implicit function was crashing when integrated.
25 Sep: The Korean version is now up to date.
23 Sep: The Croatian, Dutch, and Italian versions are now up to date.
16 Sep: Fixed a couple of bugs. That includes moving the Line Integral into the Two /menu (where it belonged in the first place). I also added a Surface Integral (flux) to the 3D|Two menu. To make it easier to read the contents of the Inventory, derived examples will now make use of Names (instead of the longer defining equations) whenever they are available.
13 Sep: Some more vector-based enhancements: The Two|Combinations dialog box now enables one vector field to be resolved into components with respect to another (parallel and perpendicular). In 3D, the cross-product construction has been repaired, and (as in 2D) it is now possible to initiate an IVP trajectory by clicking a point in the diagram, provided that the point lies on a surface of explicit (z=f(x,y)) or implicit (F(x,y,z)=0) type. It is now possible to integrate a vector field along a parametrized curve (in 2D or 3D). I await reports of bugs. By the way, the file size displayed above jumped signficantly because I recently upgraded my copy of WinZip.
9 Sep: The “derive” button now produces a gradient field when applied to an implicit example.
5 Sep: A few improvements and bug fixes, most notably: In the 2D|One|Slider dialog, the tangent constructions are now sensitive to parameter changes; the “lock interval” option now works for indefinite integrals; the Equa|Size inventory item is working again (for some reason, it had been crashing); the animation of 31 Mar has been extended to shading intervals.
27 Aug: In 2D, shaded regions were not printing properly, and the solid-fill option was not being applied to intersections. Should be better now.
17 Aug: A user reported a crash when trying to apply the 2D|One|Slider dialog to a derivative. By omitting one line of code (now installed), I indeed introduced a bug when adding curvature calculations to this dialog a few months ago. This only concerns the retrieval of files that contain derivatives. The files themselves are fine, and the Slider should now work normally on them.
12 Aug: New supplementary material uploaded today.
10 Aug: Still another jump-discontinuity refinement — the characteristic function chi(a,b,x) was overlooked in the first round.
30 Jul: A power user reported that the 2D One|Slider dialog was occasionally displaying a slope value where there ought not to be one. I hope that is now fixed (to within a small tolerance, anyway).
19 Jul: While fixing yesterday’s bug, I introduced one that is even worse (it affects anything that has to do with the sine function). So, if you downloaded the program yesterday, please do it again today!
18 Jul: Just when I thought jump discontinuities were totally under control, a power user had to point out an example that I had missed.
10 Jul: Corrected a small bit of sloppy programming, which produced occasional anomalies in 3D slow-draw hidden-line removal. Also updated the Hungarian version.
1 Jul: At a user’s request, the animation that was introduced on 31 Mar has now been extended to include examples produced using the 2D|Two|Sections dialog box. In other words, the low and high x-values of the solid can be assigned to animation parameters in the 3D window. There is also an addition to the supplementary material.
29 Jun: A user pointed out that certain graphs involving the greatest-integer function connect across jump discontinuities, so I decided to reconsider my approach to such things. I hope that the current version is an improvement.
11 May: The 2D|One|Slider dialog box should have been rejecting requests for a Taylor approximation at x = 0, instead of crashing. It has been taught to be more aware.
9 May: In rare situations, the “name” of a newly derived example was appearing as text garbage. Should be ok now.
3 May: A user requested that Taylor approximations of degree 0 be made available in the 2D Slider dialog. Done.
18 Apr: I accidentally omitted a line of code, which made the slider dialog crash if you tried to trace an evolute. Should be ok now.
15 Apr: A user requested that circles of curvature be added to the 2D One|Slider dialog box, so I did. There are no new controls, however — you must change the “degree” selection to 2 and check the “tangents” item. I also added “Evolutes” as a new item in the One menu.
31 Mar: A new feature and a correction. At a user’s request, it is now possible to automatically animate the four domain parameters that define a surface of revolution (arc start, arc stop, angle start, angle stop), so one can see the surface develop in various ways. Because the surface equations are hidden from view in the 3D window, this seemed both useful and necessary. To gain control, the user need only append a couple of characters to the usual input string. For example, writing “6.2832@K” as the angle stop value tells the program to assign 6.2832 to the parameter K, which is then inserted (invisibly) into the surface equations. Thanks to a bug report, I was able to discover a significant memory leak that had been causing problems for those who use animation sliders to create “slide shows”. I think that it has been repaired.
19 Mar: There was some interest in being able to use a bitmap as a background in 2D graphing windows (the same feature that was introduced on 14 Feb in Wingeom). Now you can.
9 Mar: A 2D window should now remember the user’s preference for a default table length.
24 Feb: Activated the “tip of the day” dialog box in the Korean version.
18 Feb: It should be possible to drag an equation around like any other text item displayed in a drawing window. A user noticed sporadic counterexamples. The bug has been fixed, I think.
13 Feb: The Hungarian version is now up to date.
9 Feb: A user noticed that displayed equations were not responding to font changes, and that derived equations were not responding to changes in the source equations. Should be better now.
5 Feb: A user noticed that the graph of f(x) = arctan(tan(x)) was connecting across the jump discontinuities. How embarrassing!
21 Jan: In 2D, the volume of revolution (Two menu) dialog box was incorrectly allowing examples that were not of explicit type y = f(x) to appear in the inventories. Not any more.
7 Jan: A user reported a crash that resulted from trying to retrieve a wp3 file that included a surface-surface intersection. This has now been fixed, I think.
2006 History.