Apart from a number of bug fixes and improvements to many of the functions, the new features that have changed from the last stable release (2.3) are:
- Plates of multiple plots, each of which can be
edited in a manner previously available only for some of the
stand-alone diagrams. Moreover, the properties of the whole
plate or all its diagrams can be changed simultaneously, e.g.
scaling the common x axis or setting to black and white.
- Many plotting functions redesigned so that they can be run solely from the command line, without any potentially pestering GUI dialogues. This enables their use in a batch mode and will ultimately enable writing programs running GCDkit from the command prompt (from a text file, by an external macro, Sweave etc.)
- New function HTMLtableOrdered, which enables to specify the width of the table (number of analyses across the page), as well as a primary and secondary keys for their ordering.
- Locales
for classification plots (French and Czech translations of
field names are provided as examples).
- Import and export for XLSX files (32bit Windows only).
- Naming
the plotting windows for better orientation (plates require
that R is installed as SDI interface, i.e. each plotting window is separate).
- New are also persistent options that can be modified in a simple GUI and then saved to a configuration file. Upon next start, the GCDkit will e.g. remember the directory with your favourite data.
- A new mechanism for distribution of patches to the GCDkit code
- New classification diagrams:
- Ternary plot of Na2O-Al2O3-K2O (mol. %) for judging the
balance of alumina and the two alkali oxides.
- New geotectonic diagrams:
- Diagram of Sylvester (1989) to distinguish
collision-related alkaline granites from calc-alkaline and peraluminous suites.
- Ternary plot Hf - Rb/30 - Ta*3, proposed by Harris et
al. (1986) for classification of collisional granites.
- Geotectonic diagrams for (ultra-) basic rocks of Verma (2006) based on natural log-transformed ratios of major and minor elements.
- Geotectonic diagrams for (ultra-) basic rocks of Agrawal (2008) based on natural log-transformed ratios of trace elements.
- New diagram Zr-Ti of Pearce (1982).
- Diagram of Sylvester (1989) to distinguish
collision-related alkaline granites from calc-alkaline and peraluminous suites.
-
New in spiderplots:
- New form of spiders, colour-coded according to an independent variable, such as silica contents (spider.contour).
- Function spider2norm for production of double normalized spider plots (see the help page for advantages of this approach; this double normalization is also newly implemented in spiderboxplots.)
- Choice of several styles of labelling x axis in spiderplot
(e.g., rotated and/or offset labels).
- Several
new normalization schemes for spiderplots were added,
including e.g. PGE.
- Plot editing: functions to outline groups on binary and
ternary plots using contours
and convex hulls (contourGroups and chulGroups) - Statistics:
- New function to plot so-called stripBoxplots - i.e. stripplots of selected parameter in individual groups, each underlain by a boxplot. Optionally also a second variable can be portrayed by various size of plotted circles.
- Function summaryRangesbyGroup for printing ranges
of selected geochemical parameters in individual groups of analyses.
- New in plugins:
- Wedge diagrams and concentration ratio plots (Ague 1994) became an part of the isocon.r plugin to expand the range of tools available for addressing mass balance during open-system processes such as metasomatism, partial melting, migmatitization or metamorphism.
- JungAlTitemp.r: New plugin implements thermometer of Jung
and Pfänder (2007) based on experimentally determined Al2O3/TiO2 ratios in granitic
magmas.
- Help: links to original papers through the DOI system. Much more examples added.