figscribe 0.3.0

The installers for macOS (Apple silicon), Windows and Linux are attached to this release a few minutes after it is published. They are not signed: macOS and Windows ask once to confirm the first start (see the README). The Windows installer and the AppImage have been built and started in CI, but not tried on hardware yet. pip install figscribe works as before.

• Installers for macOS, Windows and Linux. Each release carries a disk image
  for Apple silicon Macs, an installer for Windows and an AppImage for Linux, so
  figscribe runs without Python or pip. They are not signed: macOS asks once to
  confirm opening the app (right-click, Open), and Windows SmartScreen shows
  "More info", then "Run anyway". The AppImage needs libxcb-cursor0. Intel Macs,
  ARM Linux and .deb/Flatpak are not built; pip install works everywhere
  (decision 0066).

• The installers carry the licenses of what is in them. A
  THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt lists the packages in each installer, with their
  license texts, the LGPL for Qt with where its source is, and Python's license;
  LICENSE.txt is figscribe's own. They are in the program's licenses folder,
  beside the app in the macOS disk image, in the install folder on Windows (whose
  installer shows the license first) and in the AppImage. An installer is not
  built when a package it contains has no license file.

• Help > About figscribe says which licenses figscribe is under: MIT, Qt (through
  PySide6) under the LGPL-3.0, and where the licenses of the rest are.

• Fixed: a script written into a folder behind a link could not find its
  data. The script works out its folder with every link followed, but the
  path to the data was worked out from the folder as it was named, so on macOS
  (where /tmp and the temporary folders are links) it was off by a level.

• Export as TIFF and EPS, and with a transparent background. Export
  Figure… and Export All Figures… offer TIFF (LZW compressed, at the figure's
  dpi) and EPS; File > Export with a Transparent Background leaves out the white
  background of PNG, TIFF and SVG.

• An Allan deviation can be fitted. Fit… is offered on it, with
  the error bars as weights, a fit range in τ, a smooth curve along the log axis
  and residuals; the generated script fits the same points. A new Power law
  model (a·x^b) fits the slope of white noise, −1/2.

• Unsaved work survives a crash. Every minute figscribe writes the changes
  not yet saved to <project>.figscribe.autosave next to the project (for an
  untitled project, to its data folder); the next time the project is opened it
  offers to recover them. A save or a close removes the file.

• **Histogram, Allan deviation, image and color mesh have their settings
  arranged: Label and data says what is plotted, Look how; the
  color bar is one box with its settings under it (it was a box and a section),
  and an image's extent, first row and pixel shape are in the folded Pixel grid.

• **A fit and its residuals have their settings arranged: the fit's
  result card sits under Label and data, Look has how the curve is drawn,
  and the residuals' zero line is a section of its own, a box with its settings
  under it.

• **A note, a reference line and a shaded range have their settings in sections
  by what they are for: a note has Text and
  Place (with Position in, which its position is read in), lines and ranges
  Label and data with Legend entry first, then Look.

• Fixed: the script of a fit whose range keeps no row. After narrowing the
  range of a fitted plot (or of the fit) to one without a point, the exported
  script stopped with "ydata must not be empty". It now draws no fit, as the
  figure does, and says why in a comment; the problem list says so too, at the fit.

• The settings of an axis are found with Ctrl+K. log, symlog, limits,
  range, ticks, prefix and more find the axis's scale, range, ticks and
  label, also when only the panel or a plot is selected: choosing one opens that
  axis on the setting. A setting that waits for another, such as Linear within ±
  on a linear axis, is no longer offered.

• A note's arrow is made in the figure. Right-click a note and choose Add an
  arrow; select the note and right-click where the arrow should point:
  Point the note's arrow here. Remove the note's arrow takes it away. The
  numbers in the property panel still work, and their tip says how to do it by
  clicking.

• Finding by what a thing is known as. Find Setting or Action (Ctrl+K)
  now also knows other words: band, region, highlight or threshold find
  the shaded range and the reference lines, arrow and callout the note,
  heatmap the color mesh, residuals the fit, downsample the setting
  Fewer points, and so on. An entry found by its name comes before one found by
  another word. The empty property panel says where to look.

• The toolbar's adding buttons show what they make. Data, Figure,
  Panel, Plot, Fit, Note and a new Reference each have a picture of
  their own instead of the same plus, in two groups (what holds, and what goes
  into a panel). Plot, like Panel and Reference, opens a menu with Add Plot…
  and the kinds (Histogram, Allan deviation, Color mesh …), which opens
  the dialog on the one chosen; the entries of these menus have pictures;
  Reference adds a vertical or horizontal line or a shaded range. Insert >
  Add Line or Range is now Insert > Add Reference, and Insert > Add Plot
  As lists the kinds. In a narrow window the toolbar shows the icons alone
  instead of hiding buttons behind the » menu.

• A gallery of twelve examples on the start page, with a picture each: a
  Gaussian scan, a noisy sensor (the means of a minute over the raw line), an
  RC discharge, a freezing plateau (°C by a formula, a second axis), a
  resonance, a diode's current on a symmetric log axis, a growth curve, a
  calibration, a distribution, the stability of a clock, a beam profile (a color
  map) and a paper figure. A click asks for a folder and opens a copy of the
  example there. The data are generated, not measured. On the start page, the recent
  projects now come before the layouts and the examples, New to figscribe?
  has Try an example (scrolls to the gallery) and How it works (the README's
  Getting started) next to Describe it instead, and the date of a recent
  project is written in English whatever the system language.

• New figures have inward tick marks on all four sides, as many journals
  want, and the figure's settings are arranged by what they are for: Format
  (name, size, PNG resolution, style sheet), Text (font size, units in
  labels, panel letters), Ticks and frame with the two tick settings in view,
  their widths and lengths and the panel layout (folded). Saved projects keep
  their own ticks. A thin line now separates the sections of the property
  panel, as the design had always meant, and every section folds with a click
  on its title; the panel remembers it for each kind of object while you work. The
  section titles are larger (14 px, as large as the figure's name in the outline;
  the object's title 17 px), to be read at a glance.

• A panel's settings are arranged by what they are for: Title and axes
  (the title, then the cards of the axes, the right y axis with its card right
  after its box), Grid (the box with all its settings under it, no longer
  hidden under More), Legend, and the folded Place in layout. The legend's
  Columns is Columns of entries, and its Position is Position (dragged).

• The axis form has three sections: Label (with the label's size and
  distance), Scale (type, range, the linear zone of a symmetric log axis and
  the size of the numbers) and Ticks (major and minor, the row under the major
  ticks says Distance or Values). A section folded on an axis stays folded.

• The settings of a line, points or error bar plot are arranged by what they
  are for: Label and data (the legend entry is Legend entry), Units and
  rows (with Fewer points right under its box), Look (marker size and line
  width next to their marker and line), Error bars (the band under its box) and
  the folded Left-out points and More.

• A formula for a plot's units. x in and y in offer "a formula" next to
  "another factor": x / 60 - 273.15, (x - 32) / 1.8. It is written in x
  and numbers and must be linear and rise with x, so that error bars, axis,
  marks, ranges and fits follow as they do for a factor; the start (Start at
  0) is taken off first. The script shows the formula in Python's spacing. For
  the τ of an Allan deviation it may scale but not shift, e.g. cycles of 2.88 s
  in hours as x * 2.88 / 3600. Saved files are drawn as before.

• Fewer points drawn. A line, points or error bar plot can show the mean
  or median of every n rows, every n-th row, or the mean over intervals
  of x (Fewer points, under Data). The data file stays as it is; the
  figure, the export and the script show the reduced points and fits use
  them. An averaged point has its standard error as error bar (propagated
  when the plot has y errors); the median has none. Rows left out count as
  before and can be replaced by the mean of their neighbours. While a plot is
  reduced, leaving rows out and finding outliers are off. Saved files are
  drawn as before.

• Fixed: Save As into another folder no longer loses the data (every file was
  "missing" there). A data file outside the project's folder, or imported before
  the first save, is now stored relative to the project (../data/scan.csv),
  where it used to be stored by its whole path, so a project and its data can be
  moved or shared together; a file on another volume or drive keeps its whole path.

• Fixed: the script of a plot with fewer points drawn sto...

figscribe 0.2.0

Figures

• Several figures in one project: tabs above the figure, Insert > Add
  Figure (with the look of the shown one), duplicate, rename, reorder and
  delete from a tab or the outline; File > Export All Figures…;
  figscribe script --figure NAME and --all.
• Error bands: an error bar plot draws its y errors as a shaded band around
  the line, for dense data.
• The Allan deviation: σ_y(τ) of an evenly sampled series, frequency or
  phase, on log-log axes, for the stability of clocks, lasers and sensors.
  The script computes it with a few lines of NumPy, no extra package.
• The plot dialog shows the kinds as tiles, the columns as a sentence, a
  preview with the data, and which panel the plot goes to.
• Settings that do nothing in the current state are greyed out, and their
  tooltip says why.
• Units and a range per plot: show values in min, h, days, ms or by any
  factor, counted from the start if wanted, and draw, count and fit only the
  rows within a range of x. The axis, its marks and the plot's fits follow;
  the script converts with one line of NumPy per column.

Finding things

• A search above the property panel (Ctrl+F) keeps the settings whose name
  or explanation has the typed words.
• A command palette (Ctrl+K) finds any menu action or setting by typing.
• The property panel shows the settings used most first; the rest are
  under More.
• Several plots chosen with Ctrl or Shift in the outline: change their
  color, marker or line for all at once, or delete them together.

Editing where it is drawn

• Double-click an axis label, title, legend entry or note to edit it in
  place.
• Drag an inset's corner to resize it, or the gap between two panels.
• Right-click a plot: Style like…, Bring to front, Send to back,
  Fit…, Hide.

Everyday actions

• Edit > Duplicate (Ctrl+D) copies the selected plots, panel or figure.
  A panel comes with its plots, fits and insets, beside the original.
• Copy Style and Paste Style (Ctrl+Alt+C, Ctrl+Alt+V) give one or
  several plots the look of another, as one undo step.
• Same x range in all panels and Same y range in all panels, from a
  panel's menu in the outline or the preview.
• Edit > Copy Figure (Ctrl+Shift+C) puts the figure on the clipboard as
  PNG and SVG, for slides and documents. When figscribe closes, only the
  bitmap stays on the clipboard.
• Show in Finder (Explorer, file manager) on a data file in the outline.

Fixed

• With openai 3.38 or later, the assistant again says why Gemini refused a
  request and how long to wait at a rate limit.
• A color the panel refused no longer breaks the panel the next time it is
  built.
• The script names the encoding of a UTF-8 data file with letters beyond
  ASCII, so that it also reads the file on Windows.

Not checked by hand for this release: the manual checklist in
docs/testing.md has not been run. In particular, nobody has yet tried
pasting a copied figure into PowerPoint, Keynote or Inkscape, or Show in
Explorer on a path with spaces on Windows.

figscribe 0.1.0

The first release to use: 0.0.1 and 0.0.2 only held the name on PyPI.

Figures

• Line, scatter and error bar plots, histograms, images and color meshes
  with color bars, notes of one or several lines with or without an arrow,
  reference lines and shaded ranges.
• Exact sizes in mm and pt; several panels in a grid, insets, shared axes,
  a second y axis on the right; panel letters for journals.
• Axes in plain terms: range, linear, log or symlog, major ticks every n
  with minor ticks between them, values shown with an SI prefix (Hz drawn
  as kHz), tick marks inward or outward and on all sides.
• Line widths of the frame, the ticks and the grid, and the grid's color and
  line style; an error bar plot's line has a width apart from its bars.
• Export as PDF, SVG and PNG.

Data

• CSV with automatic detection of delimiter, decimal comma, header and unit
  rows and text encoding; NumPy .npy and .npz.
• Each file is recorded with its SHA-256: a changed or moved file is
  reported, and its new version or new place taken on request.
• A data file can be removed with the plots that draw from it.

Fits

• Linear, polynomial, Gaussian, Lorentzian, exponential, or an expression of
  your own, weighted by the error bars, with residuals in a panel below.
• Fit only a range of x; hold parameters fixed or within bounds; change a
  fit that is already there; copy the result.
• Leave points out by right-clicking them, or have outliers found and left
  out on confirmation. The data file stays as it is.

The generated script

• Every figure as a standalone Python script that needs only NumPy,
  Matplotlib and, for fits, SciPy, and reads as if a person wrote it. A test
  compares its output with figscribe's own pixel by pixel.

Working with it

• Select in the figure or the contents list, edit in the property panel,
  undo every step. Zoom and pan with the mouse, one axis at a time over its
  frame; Use as axis range keeps the view.
• An assistant that makes changes described in words: Claude, ChatGPT,
  Google Gemini or a local model, built in (figscribe[chat]) or through
  MCP (figscribe[mcp]). It sees names, never the data values.
  figscribe bench measures how well a model does.

Install: pipx install "figscribe[chat]" (or uv tool install "figscribe[chat]"), then run figscribe. Needs Python 3.11 or newer.

Initial test

Grant contents: read to the release workflow

A permissions block replaces the default permission set rather than
extending it, so id-token: write alone left actions/checkout without read
access and the checkout failed with "repository not found" on this
private repository.