GSL shell release 0.9.6 plus standard Lua module

[Francesco Abbate <gslshell@...>]

Hi all,

I'm coming again with a new release of GSL shell :-)

I confess that I was disappointed with the last announce since I've
seen little or no interest coming from the Lua community. I will stop
bother people in the mailing list if I see that there is still no
interest.

To download you can use this link which is already updated:

http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases-noredirect/gsl-shell/

You will find the windows binaries if you want to have a quick look.

So, what's new with this new release:
- I've improved the high-level interface for producing plots. For
example you can do something like that

> p = fxplot(|x| exp(-0.1*x)*sin(x), 0, 24*pi)

to have a plot and to add a second curve on the same plot:

> p:add_line(fxline(|x| exp(-0.1*x), 0, 24*pi), 'blue')

- I've added the support for special functions and written a first
good draft of the documentation. So, for example to plot the bessel
function Jn with n=6 you can write:

> fxplot(|x| besselJ(6, x), 0, 30)

- I've fixed the compilation as a lua module. This can be done by
configuring makeconfig like that:

ENABLE_COMPLEX = no
ENABLE_AGG_PLOT = yes
BUILD_LUA_DLL = yes

and you should obtain a DLL that works with a standard Lua binary.
Here you can find the DLL binary for windows:

http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases-noredirect/gsl-shell/gsl-shell-0.9.6-lua-win.zip

to test it you can write:

> draw.fxplot(function(x) return gsl.besselJ(6, x) end, 0, 30)

Please note that in this case you need to prefix the functions with
'gsl' or 'draw' and that the short function syntax is disabled (of
course, because it is the standard Lua). Talking about the source
distribution, I've added a 'module' directory that contains the .lua
initialisation files for the standard Lua build.

- I've introduced the support for the rgb and alpha blending. In
'examples/plot.lua' you can find a vonkkoch example that will show all
the beauty of the module and how you can use it creatively :-)

More generally you will find a lot of examples in the 'examples'
directory. Please don't look at the 'tests' directory.

So, that's all. As usual, any suggestion or criticism is welcome but
please no flames about the short function syntax or the complex number
support.

Cheers,
Francesco