DatPlot

Previously, DatPlot could only use CSV files where the number decimal symbol used matched the symbol of the host computer’s OS regional setting. In some countries, such as the United States or Australia a dot (.) is used as the decimal mark. In other countries, including most European countries, a comma (,) is used as the decimal mark.

If a CSV file was created in France using a comma decimal mark and another user in the United States (where the dot is the common decimal mark) tried to open that file, DatPlot would not know what to do with it. The user would have to find/replace all commas with dots before importing the CSV int DatPlot.

Version 1.3.8 changes this. Now, the user is presented with the option to override the used decimal mark for any CSV import:

When DatPlot is started, the decimal symbol displayed is defaulted to the symbol set in Windows’ Regional Settings. If you typically deal with CSV files that use the same symbol as used in your country, then no change to this parameter is required.

If, however, you receive a CSV file where the symbol is different, you can set the decimal mark used to either dot or comma, whichever the CSV contains. Doing this has some important implications:

1. The decimal symbol you select during CSV import is used for all future DatPlot work until you either 1) quit/exit DatPlot or 2) import a new CSV and change the symbol during import (note that changing the symbol only affects the running DatPlot program, not your operating system or any other programs running).
2. If you open a pre-1.3.8 saved DPM plot file, the decimal symbol used in it may differ from the symbol DatPlot is currently using.

The second point is important to remember. Prior to Version 1.3.8, DPM files do not contain information about which decimal mark is used for the data. Instead, it assumed the default decimal mark defined in the operating system’s regional settings is used. When opening older DPM files where DatPlot does not know which decimal symbol was used, it will prompt you to tell DatPlot which symbol was used to it can update the DPM file with that information:

If you decide not to update the DPM file with the decimal mark used, simply click Cancel. In that case, you will see this prompt every time you open the DPM file.  Note that pre-1.3.8 versions of DatPlot can still open DPM files with version 1.3.8 and on.

Questions? Contact me!

I added the following two new date & time formats for those who want both visible:

• YYYY/MM/DD HH:mm:ss.fff
• YYY/MM/DD HH:mm:ss

Version 1.3.6 is a minor UI tweak to accommodate long parameter names. Now the dropdown list of parameters to plot is adjusted in width based on the longest parameter name.

Version 1.3.5 is a minor update adding two new file formats that can be parsed and plottted. One is output from the popular flight simulator X-Plane (www.x-plane.com). DatPlot can read the output file generated by either version 9 or 10 of X-Plane. Several engineering companies use X-Plane for early simulation purposes and the need arose to plot X-Plane generated data in DatPlot.

The second addition is for data files that are delimited by multiple spaces instead of a single space or a single tab character. For example:

Item1—-Item2——–Item3—-Item4
34.5–25—-46.8—–45.7

In this case, each minus sign or dash represents a single space character. Regardless of the number of spaces, DatPlot strips them and parses the file accordingly. Obviously the same number of columns must exist throughout the file for the parsing to succeed.

DatPlot 1.3.3 fixes three bugs that were brought to my attention (thank you!).

1. A user had a data set where the time over midnight changed from 23:59:59 (HH:MM:ss) to 24:00:00 instead of 00:00:00. DatPlot throws an error since it cannot interpret a time of 24:00:00 (a .NET framework issue). Now, when such time data is imported, DatPlot will replace any times with 24:xx:xx with 00:xx:xx and increase the day by one.
2. When importing CSV data, any blank lines present were shown in the import preview window. These lines were also given their own line numbers. Unfortunately, internally, DatPlot does not count a blank line with its own line number. Thus, setting the data header, unit and starting line numbers based on the preview numbering resulted in misaligned starting points. Now, DatPlot will strip out any blank lines when showing the data import preview so the line numbers line up with what is use internally.
3. DatPlot’s CSV reader considers a leading hashmark (#) as a comment symbol. Any data lines leading with this character will not be displayed in the import preview as they are ignored during the data import.

Second bug fix in a short time. I wish they weren’t required in the first place, but I’ll squash them as they are found.

A user made me aware of a problem when using time based x-axis and the Data Swap feature (thanks Guillermo!). If a time based x-axis parameter was used, DatPlot crashed when swapping input data. Version 1.3.2 fixes this bug. It can be downloaded from the Download page.

I was on vacation last week when a DatPlot user made me aware of a bug that was introduced in Version 1.3. When removing a curve, DatPlot crashed. Not a good thing at all. Back from vacation, I determined what the problem was and squashed the bug. I also fixed an error introduced in Version 1.3 which did not allow intersection data export anymore. Version 1.3.1 is now the latest version of DatPlot. If you are running Version 1.3, please update to 1.3.1 to avoid this bug.

Many thanks to Claude for making me aware of this bug.

Version 1.3 of DataPlot is now available. It includes a new feature and a bug fix.

Version 1.3 allows the user to show or hide an information box in the upper right corner of each graph pane that displays the minimum/mean/maximum point values for each curve in the pane. This feature is accessed via the menu (Edit > Toggle Min/Mean/Max) or via the keyboard shortcut CTRL+M. Note that only the points visible on the graph pane are used to calculate the min/mean/max values. Any points of the curve that are not visible on the pane are ignored.

In addition, with Version 1.3 it is now possible (again) to swap data once a saved plot file has been opened. This was the originally intended functionality, but was broken with Version 1.2.

It’s been a while since I posted an update. Both to the blog and to DatPlot. Truth is, I’ve been busy with bill paying work. But it looks as if I’ll have some time in the near future to dedicate toward improving DatPlot.

As mentioned in previous posts, I hope to add multiple Y-Axis capability. Some people like to just have one plot showing all their data instead of using strip charts. But to support a larger number of data parameters, it would be handy to have multiple Y-Axis on the left and right sides. I plan on getting back into investigating such an option.

Another idea I have for DatPlot is to support contour plots. Meteorology is a hobby of mine, and I love weather data contour plots. I think DatPlot would also benefit from supporting contour plots.

Stay tuned, more to come!

As mentioned in a previous blog post, DatPlot V1.2 significantly changes how the DPM file format is structured. In addition to saving the actual plot data, all data in the data table is now saved as well. The DPM file is now fully independent of the original source data file and the DPM file is fully portable.

It also means that DPM files opened with V1.2 are automatically updated to the new file format. In other words, if you open a V1.0/V1.1 saved DPM file in V1.2, your old DPM file will be replaced with the new DPM file format and you will not be able to open the DPM with V1.0/V1.1 anymore.

Besides this change in DPM file format, the two new additions to DatPlot V1.2 are time/date formatted X axis and pasting new data into the data table.

Time/Date Formatted X Axis

DatPlot can now read time/date formatted input such as 13:11:59.075 (HH:mm:ss.fff). As long as the time/date value in the data stream corresponds to the format supported by Microsoft Excel, DatPlot should be able to read such values. During data import, DatPlot checks every data column to see if the values in it can be parsed as a date/time value. If so, that column is internally identified as a date/time parameter. When the user selects a date/time parameter for use as the X axis parameter, DatPlot displays a dialog so the user can choose how to display this date/time parameter:

Copy/Paste New Data Onto Data Table

Starting with version 1.2, DatPlot allows the user to copy column data from an external source, such as an Excel spreadsheet, and paste the data into DatPlot for plotting. This is often desired when additional parameters are calculated from the source data file in Excel and those calculated parameters need to be plotted along with the source data parameters. In this case, the user can perform all calculations in a spreadsheet and simple copy/paste the calculated column values into DatPlot for plotting.

Note that only a single column at a time can be pasted into the data table (no data block paste support). Also, if the pasted data contains more rows than the data table contains, only the number of values corresponding to the numbers of rows are pasted. Finally, if DatPlot is closed after new data was added without saving a DPM file, all new data addition is lost.

For more information on how to copy/paste new data into DatPlot, please refer to the DatPlot help file under the entry How To Paste New Data Into The Data Table For Plotting.