A Short History of DISLIN
In July 1985 I changed my job from a small institute at the University of Göttingen to the computer center of the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Katlenburg-Lindau which is renamed to Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in July 2004.
One of my first tasks at the institute in Lindau was the creating of 3-D colour plots from data of the experiment PICCA on the probe GIOTTO. I ported a collection of plotting routines written by me at the university to a Perkin Elmer machine with a Ramtek colour graphics system and released it as DISLIN 1.0. The name DISLIN is an abbreviation for Device-Independent Software Lindau. Here is a short summary of all DISLIN releases:
Version | Date | Important Changes |
---|---|---|
1.0 | Dec-1986 | The first version of DISLIN is released for plotting axis systems, secondary axes, titles, colour surfaces and text. |
2.0 | Mar-1987 | Time labels, bug fixes. |
2.1 | Apr-1987 | Additional text features, plotting of numbers, bug fixes. |
3.0 | Jun-1987 | Porting of DISLIN to a VAX 8550 with Metheus colour graphics systems. |
3.1 | Sep-1987 | First vector fonts, graphical output to a GKSLIN metafile and Kyocera laserprinters. |
3.5 | Apr-1988 | Additional features, bug fixes. |
4.0 | Oct-1989 | Tektronix emulation for graphic terminals, new output formats CGM and HPGL. |
5.0 | May-1991 | Support of X11 terminals, PostScript output, a first distribution for IBM-PCs. The distribution rights werde given to Garching Innovation (Max-Planck-Innovation since 2006) to enable DISLIN to be licensed. |
5.1 | Mar-1993 | Support of the programming language C, PC distributions for MS C and gcc. |
5.2 | Jul-1993 | New features, bug fixes. |
6.0 | Sep-1994 | New features, bug fixes. |
6.1 | Mar-1995 | Widget routines for programming graphical user interfaces. |
6.2 | Dec-1995 | Linux is supported by DISLIN, the DISLIN interpreter DISGCL is released, new features, bug fixes. |
6.3 | Oct-1996 | A first DISLIN distribution for Fortran 90 is available. |
7.0 | Sep-1998 | Native libraries for Fortran 90 are available for the most popular Fortran 90 compilers. Plotting extensions for Perl and Python. |
7.1 | Feb-1999 | Plotting extension for Java, new features, bug fixes. |
7.2 | Sep-1999 | PNG support, calendar axes, 3-D bar graphs/pie charts, cursor routines, quickplots. |
7.3 | Mar-2000 | New features, bug fixes. |
7.4 | Sep-2000 | TeX instructions for mathematical formulas, plotting of isosurfaces, support of PPM files. |
7.5 | May-2001 | Graphical output to PDF files, Delaunay triangulation. |
7.6 | Feb-2002 | Import of BMP files, true colour features for image routines. |
8.0 | Oct-2002 | Polar axis systems, user-defined symbols, support of external map coordinates. |
8.1 | May-2003 | Additional labels, 3-D bars, transparency in PNG files. |
8.2 | Feb-2004 | Bitmap fonts, new widget for scrolled text output. |
8.3 | Feb-2005 | GIF support, bookmarks for PDF files. |
8.4 | Aug-2005 | Additional true colour features, support of 64-bit Linux. |
9.0 | Nov-2005 | DISLIN is now free for non-commercial use. The license check is removed from the source code. Max-Planck-Innovation continues to issue licenses for commercial applications. Additional double precision libraries for the most DISLIN distributions. |
9.1 | Nov-2006 | Thread-safe C libraries, additional text features, explicit-shape interfaces for all Fortran 90/95 libraries. |
9.2 | Oct-2007 | Additional 3-D and map features. |
9.3 | Apr-2008 | Transparency, additional widget features. |
9.4 | Oct-2008 | Table widgets, additional cursor features. |
9.5 | Apr-2009 | Vector fields, Unicode, map features. |
10.0 | Jan-2010 | Visualization of vector fields, plotting streamlines. |
10.1 | Feb-2011 | OpenGL driver for hardware acceleration, financial bars, 3-D contours. |
10.2 | Nov-2011 | Additional widget features, bug fixes. |
10.3 | Jan-2013 | Reading TrueType fonts, importing PNG and TIFF files, additional widget features, bug fixes. |
10.4 | Jan-2014 | Orthographic projections, additional widget features, bug fixes. |
10.5 | Jan-2015 | Small feature enhancement, bug fixes. |
10.6 | Jan-2016 | Additional widget features, small feature enhancement, bug fixes. |
11.0 | Feb-2017 | Reading FITS files, bug fixes. |
11.1 | Feb-2018 | Contours on curvilinear grids, bug fixes. |
11.2 | Feb-2019 | Smith charts, additional cursor features, import of images into a 3D plane, bug fixes. |
11.3 | Mar-2020 | The DISLIN license has changed. DISLIN can now be used freely without any restrictions. Bug fixes. |
11.3.1 | Apr-2020 | I am in retirement and have left the Max-Planck-Institute for Solar System Research. The company Dislin Software is founded to continue the development and support of DISLIN. |
11.3.2 | May-2020 | New features for legends and Smith-Charts. |
11.3.3 | Jun-2020 | Legends can be plotted in table form, en in Tabellenform, TIFF files organized in tiles can be processed, bug fixes. |
11.3.3 | Jan-2021 | All rights to DISLIN have been transferred back to the author of DISLIN by Max-Planck-Innovation. |
11.4 | Mar-2021 | Background images for main widgets. Support of Windows Enhanced Metafiles (EMF). Bug fixes. |
11.5 | Mar-2022 | Minor software changes and bug fixes. Support of current versions for Perl, Python, Ruby, Go, Julia and R. |

News
Support for Python 3.11 and Windows
28. July 2023
Bug fix for the X11 distributions
22. July 2023
Upgrade 11.5.1
25. April 2023
Support for Linux 64-bit on IBM z series
30. October 2022
Support for MingW 64-bit UCRT runtime environment
28. September 2022
Release 11.5
15. March 2022
Release 11.4
15. March 2021
Support for Free Pascal 64-bit on Windows
22. July 2020
Upgrade 11.3.3
28. June 2020
Upgrade 11.3.2
19. May 2020
DISLIN Book Version 11 is available
8. March 2017
28. July 2023
Bug fix for the X11 distributions
22. July 2023
Upgrade 11.5.1
25. April 2023
Support for Linux 64-bit on IBM z series
30. October 2022
Support for MingW 64-bit UCRT runtime environment
28. September 2022
Release 11.5
15. March 2022
Release 11.4
15. March 2021
Support for Free Pascal 64-bit on Windows
22. July 2020
Upgrade 11.3.3
28. June 2020
Upgrade 11.3.2
19. May 2020
DISLIN Book Version 11 is available
8. March 2017