GeoDa-1.6.7-Release-Notes.txt

GeoDa 1.6.7 Release Notes

Changes since 1.6.5
- Fixed a potential issue on Windows 8.1 where a DLL used by
 GeoDa could conflict with QGIS. 

Changes since 1.6.4
- New "Change Variable Type" tool added to Table menu to
  allow copying data from one variable to another.  For example,
  a string variable can converted into an integer variable.
  Conversion is fast and results are immediately shown.

Changes since 1.6.3
- Fixed a bug where "Regimes Regression" checkmark was not
  updated properly in Scatter Plot Options menu.

Changes since 1.6.2
- Radio button bug fixed in Weight Creation Dialog.
- Can now choose "Open With GeoDa" for GeoDa file data sources
  such as Shapefile, CSV, Mapinfo, etc.
- Can now quickly open a file data source using
  File > New Project From menu option.
- No longer need to click "Connect" after choosing a
  file data source.
- Table Merge now supports floating point key fields and string,
  integer and floating point key fields can be used in any combination
  so long as all values are unique and number of records is equal.
- Table Merge dialog now resizable.

Changes since 1.6.1
- Fixed a problem where Add Variable wasn't enabled
  by default when saving LISA cluster numbers to Table.

Changes since 1.6.0
- Fixed a problem where buttons and windows were
  being cut off in Windows 8.1 with high-DPI displays.

Changes since 1.5.43:
- More helpful messages concerning the Project
  file are added when using Save, Save As, Close
  and Exit.

Changes since 1.5.42:
- Fixed a problem with scroll bars in Windows
- Added Arc Distance (km) in Weights Creation
- Updated radius-of-Earth constant to 6371 km
- Fixed missing zoom/pan icons in Windows

Changes since 1.5.37:
- Fixed a mismatch between Custom Category labels
  and Map legend.

Changes since 1.5.36:
- Added separate Associated Variable and Preview
  Variable choices to Custom Categories.
- Removed ability to see regression statistics in
  Moran's I scatterplot.

Changes since 1.5.35:
- Fixed a bug in Conditional Scatterplot.

Changes since 1.5.34:
- Added support for data sources with undefined/null
  polygons/point for some observations.
- Undefined map objects will be recorded in the table
  as blank (undefined) numbers when saving mean
  centers/centroids to the table.

Changes since 1.5.33:
- Enabled "Display Statistics" by default in all views
- Replaced "Show Regression of Selected" and
  "Show Regression of Selected Excluded" with single menu
  item "Regimes Regression".
- Fixed bug where could not Export to a project with geometry
  layer after creating a point geometry layer from CSV/dBase
  table-only projects.

Changes since 1.5.32:
- Removed "Numer of Categories" dialog everywhere.
- Added new Save As dialogs.
- Fixed a crash when saving ints to CSV.
- Fixed a crash in dBase int field initialization.
- Various small bug fixes.

Overview of Changes Since Major Release 1.4:

Major New Data Sources Supported
- ESRI ArcSDE database
- Oracle / Oracle Spatial database
- PostgreSQL / PostGIS database
- MySQL with Spatial Extensions database
- SQLite / Spatialite database
- ESRI File Geodatabase
- ESRI Personal Geodatabase
- WFS (Web Feature Service)
- GeoJSON
- GML
- KML
- Mapinfo
- MS Excel (read only)
- US Census TIGER/line

New Native OS Support and Installers
- Windows 64-bit for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1
- Mac OSX 64-bit for 10.6.8 or later
- CentOS 64-bit for 6.0 or later
- continued support for Windows 32-bit, and
 Ubuntu 32-bit and 64-bit.
- all OSes now support full 64-bit memory
 access for the first time.
- Windows, Mac and Linux native installers

Other Changes
- Project file added to remember data source connection
 details as well as variable order, time grouping, recently
 used weights, recently used variables, custom categories.
- Redesigned Custom Category Editor.
- Highly streamlined and flexible space-time grouping
 including support for missing time periods in various
 time-series variables.
- Dynamic space-time grouping from within Table.
- Almost all dialogs are non-blocking and update/sync
 in real-time.
- New Time period editor.
- Easy Import, Export and Merge between data sources.
- Added Windows, Mac and Linux simple installers.
- Ported to newest/major wxWidgets 3.0 library.
- Integration with GDAL/OGR.
- Rewritten/enhanced Variable Group.
- Rewritten/enhanced Variable Property editors.
- Better support for international characters in filenames
and in data.
- LISA and Getis-Ord can now be given a user-supplied
 seed value for the pseudo random number generator.
- Project Information dialog under File menu added.
- White Test is disabled by default in Regression.
- Double-clicking on GeoDa project files with "gda" file
  name extension opens that project in GeoDa.  Works on
  all platforms.  If another copy of GeoDa is currently running,
  a request is made to open project in currently-running instance.
- Program is completely independent of ESRI Shapefile
 format: GeoDa works with all of the new data formats
 natively for every type of operation.

GeoDa 1.4.6 Release Notes: 
Changes since 1.4.5:
- Fixed a big in all conditional plots when a time-variant variable
 is chosen for the vertical axis and a time-invariant variable is
 chosen for the horizontal axis.
- Improved Table row selection highlighting.

Changes since 1.4.4:
- Fixed a problem with Save As for Table Only projects

Changes since 1.4.3:
- Fixed a problem where some views wouldn't refresh unless clicked
 on with mouse.

Changes since 1.4.2:
- Regression: Moran's I z-val is computed automatically when a weights
 file is selected.  Because of the big speed increase, the checkbox to
 disable the calculation is removed.

Changes since 1.4.1:
- Regression: Moran's I z-val for OLS now supports non-symmetric
weights.  Also, massive performance improvement: there is essentially
no time penalty to run Moran's I z-val calculation: 163K obs with
6 nearest-neighbors weights finishes in 11 seconds.
- Regression: small improvements to the GUI.  View button has been
removed and results are automatically shown with calculation finishes.
- Map zoom improvements: fixed a bug with zoom on Mac.  Unlimited zooming
now supported.
- Table: Table column widths are automatically set to better fit data.

Changes since 1.4.0:
- Fixed a potential crash and a bug related to creating
contiguity weights directly from a point shape file
- Table values from some illegally formatted DBF data will display
properly rather than being cut off according to the DBF field
specifications.
- Fixed a false warning message in Regression that occurs when a
negative variance is detected for a particular test.

GeoDa 1.4.0 Release Notes
Overview of Changes Since Major Release 1.2:
- All views now support Space-Time data.
- Conditional Plot completely re-designed to support row/column
  breakpoints by theme, or by new Custom Categories dialog where
  number of row/columns and break points can be changed dynamically.
- New Custom Categories feature added.  In addition to existing
  built-in categories (Quantile, Percentile, etc), user can easily
  create new custom categories based on existing categories.  User can
  dynamically modify: number of categories, break-points, title, and
  colors.  Multiple views can share the same custom category and all
  will be automatically updated together as changes are made.
- New Animator dialog feature.  This replaces the older Map Movie
  dialog.  Animator allows data selection to be animated across all
  views and for any variable.
- New Thiessen Polygons submenu for point Maps and rewritten Thiessen
  Polygon functionality to address all existing bugs and to increase
  performance.
- New Cartogram maps.  Performance greatly improved with multi-core
  support for space-time cartograms.
- Numerous performance enhancement and bug fixes

GeoDa 1.3.29 Release Notes:
Changes since 1.3.28
- Empty values in CSV file supported.

Changes since 1.3.27
- added support for reading Point and Polygon Shapefiles with
  "Measure" data and "Z-value" data.
- Fixed a bug where Scatterplot regression lines were not showing up
  in "Save Image As" or "Save to Clipboard."
- Added Map and Scatterplot rendering optimizations for large
  datafiles.  This should greatly speed up linking/brushing and window
  resizing for Shapefiles with 100 to 500 thousand observations.

Changes since 1.3.26
- Updated GeoDa icons
- Renamed program from OpenGeoDa to GeoDa

Changes since 1.3.24
- Better default Custom Categories names
- Several bug fixes to Custom Categories
- Now using official Boost Polygon Voronoi library (Boost 1.52 or
later)

Changes since 1.3.21
Category Editor Enhancements:
- All views with themes now fully support Custom Categories
- When creating a new custom category, the preview variable
  is now remembered as a default.  This makes it convenient to
  switch between editing different custom categories using the
  Categories Editor.
- Categories Editor aware of changes to Table.  In particular
  it automatically updates when variables are added or deleted.

Changes since 1.3.18
- Increased allowed number of time periods from 200 to 10000.

Changes since 1.3.15
New Category Editor
- Ability to create and edit custom category breaks
- Real-time histogram preview.
- Rich set of controls with intelligent defaults.
- Ability to edit breaks, category colors, number of categories and
  category titles.
- Can copy from existing categories.

Changes since 1.3.14
- Fixed a bug when closing Cartogram

Changes since 1.3.13
- Fixed an issue with Time field in Animation Dialog.
- New Regression toolbar icon.
- Improvements to Conditional Histogram axes.

Changes since 1.3.12
- New Conditional Histogram: very similar to new
  Conditional Scatter Plot and Maps.
- LISA and Moran's Toolbar icons reduced to just two icons that open
  up a submenu with three choices each.
- New Regression icon added to Toolbar.

Changes since 1.3.11:
New Animation Dialog
- Replaces Map Movie.
- Includes controls for reverse, loop, ascending and descending order
  playback.  Can also toggle between cumulative and single selection
  mode.
- Currently available data fields are synchronized to the Table.  If a
  Table variable is added or deleted, the currently open Data
  Selection Movie dialog reflects the change.
- Highly interactive: buttons, checkbox changes and variable changes
  do not reset the slider position and the current set of selected
  objects is automatically updated.

Changes since 1.3.10:
- Regression Dialog: integrated the Regression Title dialog into
  the main Regression Dialog.
- Regression Dialog: Added "Save to File" button for writing output
  to a text file.
- Regression output: cleaned up formatting in several places.
- Regression Dialog: fixed a bug where garbage results could be
  produced when new Table Variables are inserted/removed while
  Regression Dialog is open.

Changes since 1.3.9:
- New Toolbar icon for Time Control window.
- Internal code cleanup.  Should result in some performance speedup
  when performing brushing.

Changes since 1.3.8:
- Connectivity Histogram: updated look, similar to the current
  Histogram, but binning algorithm optimized for integer values.
- Connectivity Histogram: can now save number of neighbors to Table
- Connectivity Histogram: option to select neighborless observations
  when they exist.
- fixed: LISA Save Results could sometimes produce a false duplicate
  variable names warning.

Changes since 1.3.7:
All new space-time-aware Conditional Scatter Plot:
- Option to hide/show axes values labels (shown by default)
- Option to hide/show slope values (hidden by default)
- slope values with p-val <= 0.05 annotated with *
- slope values with p-val <= 0.01 annotated with **

Changes since 1.3.6:
- All new space-time-aware Conditional Map Plot

Changes since 1.3.5:
- All maps and Bubble Chart use the same outline-style as the new
  Cartogram.
- Removed Polygons to Mean Centers / Centroids from Tools menu
- Added Save Mean Centers / Centroids to Shapefile in Map Options menu

Changes since 1.3.4:
Cartogram changes:
- Cartogram now fully supports space-time
- Estimates of time to complete Cartogram improvements with iterations
  given in menu.  Estimates are improved for every time iterations
  are performed.
- Cartogram improvements > 2 seconds are animated in real-time with
  updates approximately every second.
- Initial Cartogram loading time is always as fast as possible, even
  for very large data sets.
- Space-time improvements performed using all available CPU cores.
- All standard map themes now supported.  No limitations of data
  values being positive, non-zero, or range being non-zero.
- New outline coloring scheme aids in visualizing large data sets.
- For space-time data, radius scaling is fixed across all time
  periods, ie. observations with same value have the exact same circle
  area across all time periods.

Changes since 1.3.3:
- Fixed a rare edge-case bug in Scatter Plot where the Chow test
  calculation would cause a crash.
Weights Creation:
- When calculating contiguity weights from points directly, duplicate
  points are handled by making all duplicates at a common location
  neighbors of each other.  A warning dialog is shown the first time
  with the option of saving duplicates to the Table.  After that,
  the warning dialog is now shown again.
- Weights Creation only applies to currently opened project.
- Euclidean point distance method is now the only option for kNN.
- Fixed some bugs related to creating weights with no shapefile
present.
- Removed Points to Polygon option from the tools menu.  Similar
  functionality is now accessible from within the Options menu of any
  map window.

Changes since 1.3.2:
- Added ability generate rook/queen contiguity weights directly from
  point shapefiles.

Changes since 1.2.0:
- Save To Table Dialog: variable checkbox selected automatically after
  creating a new variable.
- Save To Table Dialog: variable type in Add Variable Dialog defaults
  to integer automatically when saving integer data.
- Maps: new Thiessen Polygons submenu.  For a point-shape-file map
  window, can now:
  1) display Thiessen Polygons on the current map
  2) Save Thiessen Polygons to a new shapefile
  3) If duplicate or near-duplicate points are detected, then user is
     given the option to save sets of duplicate ids to the Table.
     This should aid the user in correcting the problem.

Changes since 1.0.1:
Release 1.2.0 of GeoDa includes the most significant changes
to the program since it was first released publicly. There are
too many small improvements to list, but some highlights include:

- Space-Time exploratory data analysis is available in almost
  every data visualization window.
- Space-Time data is fully linked across all views in real-time.
- Most visualizations have been rewritten to support space-time.
- Very easy to convert simple table data into space-time data by
  opening a regular shapefile/dbf/csv file and choosing
  "Convert to Space-Time Project" from the Table menu.
- General graphics and features have been greatly improved everywhere.

Maps:
- Supports space-time data
- Added Natural Breaks and Unique Values themes
- Can now select all observations in a category by clicking a color
  box in the legend
- Can optionally show polygon centers on the map

Bubble Chart:
- Supports space-time data
- Bubble Charts are entirely new to GeoDa.  Very similar to
  Scatter Plot, but four variables can be visualized by varying
  the size and color of plot points.

Scatter Plot:
- Supports space-time data
- Completely rewritten graphics for a cleaner look
- Can optionally choose "Display Statistics" to see parameters
  describing all three regression lines when "Regression of Selected"
  and "Regression of Excluded" are active.
- Chow test automatically shown to determine if two regressions
  are significantly different.

Parallel Coordinate Plot:
- Supports space-time data
- Completely rewritten graphics for a cleaner look
- Can optionally choose "Display Statistics" to see more detailed data.
- Legend added to left side to support new color classification
  feature.

Histogram:
- Supports space-time data
- Completely rewritten graphics for a cleaner look
- Can optionally choose "Display Statistics"

Box Plot:
- Supports space-time data
- Completely rewritten graphics for a cleaner look
- Can optionally choose "Display Statistics"
- Can view multiple Box Plots together in a time series for space-time
  data.
- Added an optional vertical axis scale
- Selection works across all box plots when viewing space-time data

3D Plot:
- Supports space-time data
- Fixed a number of bugs related to linking and brushing


Changes since 1.1.0 beta 43:
- Fixed a problem with wrong in Time Chooser dialog
- Move Centroids / Mean-centers into common submenu and
  added ability to show both centroids and mean-centers on
  any map window.
- Renamed Space menu options.
- Removed three Tools menu options related to import and export
  of point data.
- Moved Save and Save As into File menu.

Changes since 1.1.0 beta 42:
- Fixed a crash in the Scatterplot Chow Test that could occur in
  certain edge cases.
- Improved algorithms for toolbar sizing, and statistics table
  placement and sizing for Scatterplot, Histogram, and Boxplot.
  This solves an issue that comes up on Windows XP/Vista/7 when
  larger font sizes were selected in system Display settings.

Changes since 1.1.0 beta 41:
- Added calculation for z-value to Moran's I Randomization Dialog
  z-value(I) = (I - mean)/sd
- Fixed a bug where the user could manually edit the dependent
  variable field in Regression.  To change the variable, the user
  must select a new variable and the previous variable will be
  restored to the end of the variable list.
- For all views with legends, when colors for a category are changed
  in one time period, it is also changed for in all other time periods
  with the same number of categories.
- Fixed a problem where toolbar could be partially hidden in Win 7 or
  Vista when a magnification level greater than 100% is selected under
  system Display options.

Changes since 1.1.0 beta 1 through 40:
- The 1.1.0 beta releases were internal development releases that were
  not made publicly available.  The changes were so numerous that
  we were not listing them in these release notes until recently. The
  release notes for 1.2.0 above summarizes some of the major changes
  to the program.

Changes since 1.0.1:
- Most variable dialogs are now resizable.
- Fixed a bug in Save Selection and Selection Dialogs where saved
  values could get written to the wrong field.

Changes since 1.0:
- Fixed a bug in Scatter Plot where plot points were difficult to see.

Changes since 0.9.9.15:
- Bug in Arc Distance option for Threshold Distances fixed.

Changes since 0.9.9.14:
- Major speedup to LISA and Getis-Ord Gi-Statistics.  When a
  multi-core processor is detected, pseudo p-val calculations are
  split up amongst the cores.  On some machines a 20x speedup is
  possible.
- Ability to load, edit and perform calculations on a DBF without the
  SHP / SHX files from the File menu.
- Table code totally rewritten with many new features.
- Table: can drag columns to reorder and new column order remembered
  after saving Table
- Table: Edit Variable Properties dialog added.  Can rename fields and
  change all field properties such as field width and number of
  displayed decimals
- Table: Variable Calculation: Can generate Gaussian Normal distribution
- Table: Variable Calculation: Can randomly shuffle order of any
  numerical field
- Table: Replaced Range dialog with new more powerful Selection Dialog
- Table: undefined / invalid numbers appear as blank entries.  For
  example, square root of negative numbers appear as blanks rather
  than zeros.  Use new Selection Dialog to find all undefined numbers
- Merge Table Dialog: more robust and powerful.  Automatically
  identifies and eliminates duplicate field names.
- Regression: fixed a problem where invalid results could occur
  after adding a new field to Table without saving first.
- Weights Creation: can manually edit distance field.
- Many small bug fixes and stability improvements.

Changes since 0.9.9.13:
- Added ability to enter in constants directly in Variable
  Calculations

Changes since 0.9.9.11:
- Getis & Ord local G statistics added.  A new toolbar icon
  has been added and a new menu option under space.

Changes since 0.9.9.10:
- "Select All... Cores, Neighbors of Cores, Cores and Neighbors"
  added to LISA maps as a right-click-popup menu option to aid
  in LISA analysis.
- "Add Neighbors To Selection" right-click-popup menu option added
  to LISA maps and to Table (when a weights file has been loaded).
- Added limited support for DBF date field.  Dates are treated
  like an integer, but are limited to 8 digits long and must be
  in the format YYYYMMDD.  For example Jan 31, 2011 will appear
  as 20110131.
- Tested on Ubuntu 9, 10, and 11 for both 32-bit and 64-bit.

Changes since 0.9.9.9:
- An unlimited number of DBF fields is now supported.  Note
  that some older DBF programs only support a limited number of
  fields, but there appears to be no standard for what is acceptable.
- Fixed an issue where the number of outliers calculated by Box Map,
  Box Plot, and Cartogram map would sometimes slightly disagree.
- Fixed an issue where program would hang when a Moran's Scatter Plot
  for a weights file containing isolates is displayed an isolates are
  selected in another view.

Changes since 0.9.9.8:
- Moran's I, LISA maps and LISA box plot now correctly handle
  weights files with neighborless observations.  Notice that
  a new category has been added in LISA maps for neighborless
  observations.  Neighborless observations are completely excluded
  from Moran's I calculations and from LISA box plot.

Changes since 0.9.9.7:
- The loading time for point-data Shapefiles significantly reduced.
- it is now possible to open a weights file that was created from a
  different shp file than the shp file that is currently opened: only
  the number of observations and the id variable in current dbf file
  need to match.
- Re-added variable and weighs selection toolbar icons
- Increased precision of Shp to Bnd export to 10 digits after the
  decimal.

Changes since 0.9.9.6:
- LISA maps a now fully synchronized again
- Newly created weights files are now loaded into GeoDa
  automatically.
- Weights can now be easily selected and created everywhere that
  they are needed.
- New fields can be added to the table from within the Variable
  Calculation dialog.

Changes since 0.9.9.5:
- Fixed an issue with mouse selection on OSX where a selection
  rectangle would automatically start in the upper-left-hand corner
  when mouse focus first moved between two windows.
- Added some white-space between Condition Plot cells for maps.
- Weights Characteristics Histogram: when neighborless observations
  (isolates) are detected, a button appears in the histogram for
  selecting all neighborless observations.
- Added observation counts to cell windows in all Condition Plots.

Changes since 0.9.9.4:
- Histogram was sometimes treating values as integers when it should
  have been treating them as general floats.
- The labels in the "Save Regression Results" were mixed up.  This
  has been resolved.
- In conditional plot, the X/Y axis for each scatterplot cell was did
not match the labeling.
- Box Plot graphics are improved.  The median is displayed clearly
  as an orange line, and the mean is a green dot.  Observation
  selection behavior is also fixed.
- Conditional Box Plot view now works properly.

Changes since 0.9.9.3:
- Fixed a bug in Regression where values for R^2 and lambda/rho
  were invalid when isolates present in the weights file.
- Reenabled ability to change order of variables in PCP map
  by dragging on the control circles.  Dragging behavior changed
  so that a dragged variable will be inserted between the two
  variables that it is dragged to (ie, the user should drag the
  control line between control lines, rather then on top of another
  control line).
- Weights Histogram now appears the same as in Legacy.
  it is once again very easy to see if there are any isolates in
  the weights file.

Changes since 0.9.9.2:
- Fixed a serious problem where Spatial Lag Model and Spatial
  Error regression models would give bad results when opening
  the Regression dialog directly from a DBF file.  This bug
  only existed in the 0.9.9.1 and 0.9.9.2 releases.

Changes since 0.9.9.1:
- Default number of digits after the decimal for new floating
  point Table entries is nine rather than four.

Changes since 0.9.9.0:
- Fixed a bug where algorithms that use a spatial lag,
  such as Moran's I, would produce incorrect results for
  GWT weights files.
- Lisa clusters are now updated when the significance
  level is changed: non-significant clusters are now
  categorized correctly when save to the Table.

Changes since 0.9.8.19:
- Reduced size of toolbar to less than 800 pixels wide.
  Thematic Map toolbar icons have been consolidated
  into a single icon with a drop-down menu.

Changes since 0.9.8.18:
- Last-used variable settings remembered
- non-significant LISA categories now recorded as 0 when
  saving to the Table.
- Table shows all decimal places for floating point numbers
  according to the precision field in the DBF file.
- Fixed a problem where floating point numbers in a DBF
  file would get truncated when GeoDa was running
  on a computer that uses "," as a decimal separator.
- When importing data from a txt file, GeoDa defaults
  to 9 digits of precision after the decimal place in the DBF file. 

Changes since 0.9.8.17:
- Restored fast loading times for Table and Map
- Fixed a potential crash in Shape to Boundary conversion

Changes since 0.9.8.16:
- Improved the appearance of map in Conditional Plot
- Options to change the colors in Map Movies now appear
  in the Options menu for the Map Movie.
- Fixed an issue with Copy to Clipboard and Save As
- Progress Bars added for shp file loading and Regression
- Fixed bugs in Quantile map and improved so that number
  of available Quantiles is limited to number of different
  values in variable or nine, whichever is less.
- Can now use GWT for Rate calculation in Table
- Miscellaneous smaller bug fixes.

Changes since 0.9.8.15:
- Ability to specify float, int, or string data types
  when adding a new column to the table.
- Fixed an issue with panning and zooming introduced
  in release 0.9.8.15
- Other minor bug fixes and error message updates.

Changes since 0.9.8.14:
- Not much has changed functionality-wise, but there have
  been a number of bug fixes and we are building against the
  wxWidgets 2.9.1 platform.  This alpha release is now always
  recommended over Legacy GeoDa.
- Major improvements in Linux.  There is no longer any drawing
  artifacts left on the screen.
- Flicker removed from Windows.
- Ability added to not draw polygon outlines.  This helps greatly
  when viewing maps with many regions.  Look for this new option
  under the Color submenu of the Options menu on any map. 
- Huge speed improvements during brushing operations when
  large maps are visible.  Brushing is now much faster than in
  Legacy GeoDa.

Changes since 0.9.8.13:
- A 'Unique / Key ID Variable' is no longer needed when opening
  up a SHP file.  In the Weights Creation dialog, there is now an
  easy way to directly add a new ID Variable to the DBF file
  directly if needed.  It is no longer possible to create a weights
  file without specifying an ID Variable.
- Weights File Creation dialog now opens the current project
  Shapefile by default.
- Select Weightss dialog now opens up to the same directory
  as the currently open Shapefile.

Changes since 0.9.8.12:
- Re-enabled the ability to choose a character field from the DBF
  file as a key variable upon opening a Shapefile.  At the moment,
  character fields are not offered as an option in the weights
  creation dialog.  Use <Record ID> as a workaround if needed.

Changes since 0.9.8.11:
- Table 'Move Selected to Top' option only does something when at
  least one observation is selected.
- A widespread issue on Mac where parts of various images where
  being duplicated by being slightly shifted upwards has been solved.

Changes since 0.9.8.10:
- It is now possible to choose between Arc Distance / Euclidean
  Distance and Center Points / Mean Centers for all weights creation
  options that require distance between polygon / point centers.
- Arc distance calculation corrected: input  is degrees of lat/long
  and output is arc distance in miles with the assumption that earth
  is a perfect sphere with a radius of 3959 miles.
- 'Central Points' labels changed to 'Mean Center'.  The mean center
  calculation was previously incorrect.  Also note that legacy GeoDa
  incorrectly calls mean centers 'centroids'.  GeoDa also offers
  centroids and these are now calculated correctly as the center of
  gravity..
- All weights creation functionality has been verified to be correct.  

Changes since 0.9.8.9:
- Solved an issue where Bivariate Map Movie would sometimes crash.
- Bivariate Equal Interval Map no longer crashes.
- Shapefile to Boundary conversion crash on Windows is fixed.
- Shapefile from ASCII import fixed.
- Table "Save to Shapefile as ..." menu item working again.
- Data Export: Centroids/Mean Centers no longer results in an
   occasional crash.
- Shapefile Creation: polygons from boundary now works.

Changes since 0.9.8.8:
- Hinge = 3.0 theme now works for various map smoothing options
- Map themes are disabled for "Excess Risk" smoothing option
- Labels for X, Y, and Z axes now appear in the 3D Control
  panel window (not in the 3D plot itself).  Previously the user
  had to remember which axis was which.
- Check-marks now accurately reflect the current chosen Map
  theme and smoothing function.
- The title for the main tool-bar window now changes to indicate
  which window is currently active.
- Labels for various Map windows (title and legend) have been
  corrected.
- Various bugs fixed to improved Table operation stability.  Many
  operations that would add a new column to the Table caused
  the program to crash previously.
- Weight-create toolbar item is always enabled.
- Restored Tools > Weights > Open and Properties menu options.
- A problem where Shapefiles generated by GeoDa could
  not be read by other GIS programs has been resolved.
- When opening a Shapefile, only columns of type integer are
  presented to the user as possible unique polygon identifiers.

Changes since 0.9.8.7:
- New image output formats: The "Save Image As" dialog now has options
  for BMP, PNG and PS.  The PS (PostScript) format is the default
  and this outputs a vector-graphics version.  This file can be
  easily converted to a PDF file with various free programs.
- Improved stability: several memory-leaks discovered and closed.
- Only SHP file name is displayed in the map title and legend rather
  than the full-path name and name with extension, respectively.
- First releases for Linux!  Download either 32-bit or 64-bit as
  appropriate.  The 64-bit version is less tested and is more
  prone to stability issues at this time.