(Nearly) complete list of changes in the GCDkit 3.0

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).
  
  
• 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.

See our web page  or this short paper for further details.