What's New in 4.6.6?

This is a maintenance version mostly important for Macs users.

What's New in 4.6.4?

This is a maintenance version mostly important for Macs users.

What's New in 4.6.1?

This is a maintenance version with various bug fixes.

What's New in 4.6.0?

Version 4.6.0 has relatively few new features but substantial internal updates were made.

What's New in 4.5.0?

Version 4.5.0 is a substantial update with many new features listed below. The documentation was updated and describes all the new features.

What's New in 4.3.0?

Version 4.3.0 introduces a Measure Tool. It allows one to measure distances in pixel, plot , and user defined units. The latter makes it also useful to measure distances and angles in maps or technical drawings. There are several features related to this new tool that are explained in detail in the updated documentation.

Also added a warning dialog to save (or discard) data when a new plot is loaded and the current data is not saved.

What's New in 4.2.1?

This version introduces a small zoom window depicting the region around the cross-hair cursor, enlarged for more precise scanning. One can activate it with the Cursor Zoom command in the View menu.

A second feature added is the Screen Scan mode that can be launched in the File menu. When switched on, the main (scan) window turns semi-transparent letting you scan any image displayed on the screen without having to load it.

Two new shortcuts were introduced: Ctrl+C (macOS: ⌘+C) to bring the Coordinates tab to the front and Ctrl+A (macOS: ⌘+A) for the Axis Settings tab.

All new features are documented. Documentation and Tool Tips were improved in many places.

What's New in 4.1.0?

With 4.1.0 the Windows version gets reintroduced in form a convenient binary installer. It was build and tested on Windows 10. For now the support of pdf files had to be dropped in the Window version. On the Mac (and to some extent on Windows) it is now possible to open an image file with xyscan directly from the Finder (right-click then Open With). Works with the major file types such as png, gif, tif, jpg, and pdf.

What's New in 4.0.0?

This is a major rewrite of many parts of xyscan. Changes were made to the GUI and support for PDF was added. Some features that had stopped working, such as drag and drop, were restored. The documentation was updated and simplified. For certain platform-screen combinations (e.g. Retina) it is now possible to use even finer cursor adjustment steps than before (alt/option+arrow). For this version, non-English language support was dropped.

What's New in 3.3.3?

This is only a maintenance release mostly for Mac OS 10.9. xyscan now uses Qt 5.3. Few internal changes that were necessary due to the new Qt version but nothing that affects the functionality. For the Mac some adjustments were made to deal with Retina displays. This version was not tested on Windows or Linux.

What's New in 3.3.0?

This is the first multi-lingual version of xyscan. The first language provided other than English is French. In addition two new features were added:

  1. As suggested by several users, I added the possibility to change the color of the cross-hairs. The best choice is to pick a color that contrasts well with the color of the data points. The color can be changed via the Edit->Crosshairs Color... menu item.
  2. xyscan now allows to check for updates. This feature is still in the experimental phase. Checks are not done automatically but have to be triggered using Help->Check for Updates menu item.

Bug fixes: When zooming in a plot the scanning area lost it's scroll bars so that the markers could not be set anymore. This is fixed now. However I want to point out that zooming in does not necessarily increase the precision of the scan.

What's New in 3.2.2?

Only change compared to 3.2.1 is the addition of a new docking window (Plot Adjustments) that holds two spin boxes that allow to rotate and scale (zoom in/out) the current plot. Rotating is mandatory if you want to scan a tilted plot. Scaling was added for convenience but typically will not increase scanning precision. The docking window is not visible by default. To view use View->Plot Adjustments.

What's New in 3.2.1?

Starting with this version xyscan does not handle the scan of tilted plots any more. It assumes perfectly aligned plots (i.e., not tilted w.r.t. the vertical or horizontal). Scanning tilted plots required precisely aligned markers (in x and y each) making the scanning of perfectly aligned plots (99% of all cases) more cumbersome. Instead xyscan now allows to rotate a plot before the scan should that be necessary. To do so use the spin box in the Axis panel (next to the log buttons). Use the cross-hair to check for horizontal and/or vertical alignment.

Due to this change, setting the markers is now much simpler. Instead of setting the markers exactly on the axis (which was necessary to determine the tilt) all one needs is to define the exact x (y) position for x (y) markers. The other coordinate is not relevant any more. The old square markers were replaced by gray lines.

Other changes:
When all markers are set and log is pressed the displayed numbers are now updated instantaneously (before the cursor had to me moved once).
Fixed bug in error scan handling. Error handling method (mean/average/asymmetric) selected for x was applied to the y errors and vice versa. 

What was New in 3.1.0?

The cross-hair can now be moved quickly to the current mouse pointer position by double-clicking the left mouse button. This speeds up the settings of the markers and the scanning considerably.

xyscan now allows you to store the scanned points in form of a ROOT macro. To do so the filename has to have the extension .C. For all other extensions (if any) the data will be written as before, that is as a table in plain text format.

Marker can now also be set via keyboard shortcuts : Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3, Ctrl+4, for lower, upper x, and lower and upper y, respectively.

Minor changes to the page layout of the printout.

What was New in 3.0.2?

Fixed typo in marker position dialog. Otherwise identical to 3.0.2.

What was New in 3.0.1?

Version 3.01 is the first release of a complete rewrite of xyscan. The previous version (2.09) is not supported any more. While the user graphical user interface changed quite a bit the basic workflow remains the same. Users that worked with xyscan before should have no problem to adapt to the new interface. The main new features are: