Pygmt

[](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15071586)

Highlights

* 🎉 **Fifteenth minor release of PyGMT** 🎉
* One new gallery example and two new tutorials
* Figure.shift_origin: Support shifting origins temporarily when used as a context manager ([2509](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/2509))
* Documentation as HTML ZIP archive and in PDF format for offline reference

Enhancements

* **BREAKING** Support typesetting apostrophe (') and backtick (`) ([3105](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3105))
* **BREAKING** pygmt.grdcut: Refactor to store output in virtualfiles for grids ([3115](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3115))
* GMTDataArrayAccessor: Support passing values using enums GridRegistration and GridType for grid registration and type ([3696](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3696))
* pygmt.grdfill: Add new parameters 'constantfill'/'gridfill'/'neighborfill'/'splinefill' for filling holes ([3855](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3855))
* pygmt.grdfill: Add new parameter 'inquire' to inquire the bounds of holes ([3880](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3880))
* pygmt.grdfill: Add alias 'coltypes' (-f) ([3869](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3869))

Deprecations

* pygmt.grdfill: Deprecate parameter 'no_data' to 'hole' (remove in v0.19.0) ([3852](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3852))
* pygmt.grdfill: Deprecate parameter 'mode', use parameters 'constantfill'/'gridfill'/'neighborfill'/'splinefill' instead (remove in v0.19.0) ([3855](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3855))
* pygmt.grdclip: Deprecate parameter 'new' to 'replace' (remove in v0.19.0) ([3884](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3884))
* clib.Session: Remove deprecated open_virtual_file method, use open_virtualfile instead (Deprecated since v0.11.0) ([3738](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3738))
* clib.Session: Remove deprecated virtualfile_from_data method, use virtualfile_in instead (Deprecated since v0.13.0) ([3739](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3739))

Documentation

* Add an advanced tutorial for plotting focal mechanisms (beachballs) ([2550](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/2550))
* Add an advanced tutorial for creating legends ([3594](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3594))
* Add a gallery example for Figure.hlines and Figure.vlines ([3755](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3755))

Maintenance

* Use the 'release-branch-semver' version scheme for setuptools_scm ([3828](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3828))
* Rename _GMT_DATASET.to_dataframe to .to_pandas and _GMT_GRID.to_dataarray/_GMT_IMAGE.to_dataarray to .to_xarray ([3798](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3798))
* Bump to ruff 0.9.0, apply ruff 2025 style, and ignore A005 (stdlib-module-shadowing) violations ([3763](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3763))
* Use well-known labels in project URLs following PEP753 ([3743](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3743))
* clib.conversion: Remove the unused array_to_datetime function ([3507](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3507))
* CI: Test on Linux arm64 runners ([3778](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3778))
* CI: Build PDF documentation using tectonic ([3765](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3765))

**Full Changelog**: <https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/compare/v0.14.0...v0.15.0>

Contributors

* [Dongdong Tian](https://github.com/seisman)
* [Yvonne Fröhlich](https://github.com/yvonnefroehlich)
* [Wei Ji Leong](https://github.com/weiji14)
* [Michael Grund](https://github.com/michaelgrund)

---

[](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14868324)


Bug Fixes

* **Patch release fixing a critical bug introduced in PyGMT v0.14.1**
* Fix the bug for passing text strings with numeric values ([3804](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3804))

**Full Changelog**: <https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/compare/v0.14.1...v0.14.2>

Contributors

* [Dongdong Tian](https://github.com/seisman)

---

[](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14742338)

Highlights

* **Patch release fixing critical bugs in PyGMT v0.14.0**
* Fix the bug of converting Python sequence of datetime-like objects ([3760](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3760))

Maintenance

* CI: Separate jobs for publishing to TestPyPI and PyPI ([3742](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3742))
* clib.conversion._to_numpy: Add tests for Python sequence of datetime-like objects ([3758](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3758))
* Fix an image in README.md (broken on PyPI) and rewrap to 88 characters ([3740](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3740))
* Fix the dataset link in the RGB image gallery example ([3781](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3781))
* Update License year to 2025 ([3737](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3737))

**Full Changelog**: <https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/compare/v0.14.0...v0.14.1>

Contributors

* [Dongdong Tian](https://github.com/seisman)
* [Wei Ji Leong](https://github.com/weiji14)

---

[](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14535921)

Highlights

* 🎉 **Fourteenth minor release of PyGMT** 🎉
* Bump minimum supported version to GMT>=6.4.0 ([3450](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3450))
* Two new plotting methods and six new functions to access more GMT remote datasets
* PyArrow as an optional dependency and improved support of PyArrow data types ([3592](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3592))

New Features

* Add Figure.hlines for plotting horizontal lines ([923](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/923))
* Add Figure.vlines for plotting vertical lines ([3726](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3726))
* Add load_black_marble to load "Black Marble" dataset ([3469](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3469))
* Add load_blue_marble to load "Blue Marble" dataset ([2235](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/2235))
* Add load_earth_deflection to load "IGPP Earth east-west and north-south deflection" datasets ([3728](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3728))
* Add load_earth_dist to load "GSHHG Earth distance to shoreline" dataset ([3706](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3706))
* Add load_earth_mean_dynamic_topography to load "CNES Earth Mean Dynamic Topography" dataset ([3718](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3718))
* Add load_earth_mean_sea_surface to load "CNES Earth Mean Sea Surface" dataset ([3717](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3717))
* load_earth_free_air_anomaly: Add "uncertainty" parameter to load the "IGPP Earth free-air anomaly uncertainty" dataset ([3727](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3727))


Enhancements

* Figure.plot: Add the "symbol" parameter to support plotting data points with varying symbols ([1117](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1117))
* Figure.plot3d: Add the "symbol" parameter to support plotting data points with varying symbols ([3559](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3559))
* Figure.legend: Support passing a StringIO object as the legend specification ([3438](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3438))
* load_tile_map: Add parameter "crs" to set the CRS of the returned dataarray ([3554](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3554))
* PyArrow: Support pyarrow arrays with string/large_string/string_view types ([3619](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3619))
* Support 1-D/2-D numpy arrays with longlong and ulonglong dtype ([3566](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3566))
* GMT_IMAGE: Implement the to_dataarray method for 3-band images ([3128](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3128))
* Ensure non-ASCII characters are typeset correctly even if PS_CHAR_ENCODING is not "ISOLatin1+" ([3611](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3611))
* Add enums GridRegistration and GridType for grid registration and type ([3693](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3693))

Deprecations

* SPEC 0: Bump minimum supported versions to Python 3.11, NumPy 1.25, pandas>=2.0 and xarray>=2023.04 ([3460](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3460), [#3606](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3606), [#3697](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3697))
* clib.Session.virtualfile_from_vectors: Now takes a sequence of vectors as its single argument (Passing multiple arguments will be unsupported in v0.16.0) ([3522](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3522))
* Remove the deprecated build_arg_string function (deprecated since v0.12.0) ([3427](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3427))
* Figure.grdcontour: Remove the deprecated syntax for the 'annotation' parameter (deprecated since v0.12.0) ([3428](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3428))

Bug Fixes

* launch_external_viewer: Use full path when opening the file in a web browser ([3647](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3647))
* PyArrow: Map date32[day]/date64[ms] dtypes in pandas objects to np.datetime64 with correct date/time units ([3617](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3617))
* clib.session: Add the GMT_SESSION_NOGDALCLOSE flag to keep GDAL open ([3672](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3672))
* Set the "Conventions" attribute to "CF-1.7" for netCDF grids only ([3463](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3463))
* Fix the conversion error for pandas.Series with missing values in pandas<=2.1 ([3505](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3505), [#3596](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3596))
* GeoPandas: Explicitly convert columns with overflow integers to avoid OverflowError with fiona 1.10 ([3455](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3455))
* Figure.plot/Figure.plot3d: Improve the check of the "style" parameter for "v" or "V" ([3603](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3603))
* Correctly reserve the grid data dtype by converting ctypes array to numpy array with np.ctypeslib.as_array ([3446](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3446))
* **Breaking**: Figure.text: Fix typesetting of integers when mixed with floating-point values ([3493](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3493))

Documentation

* Add basic tutorial "Plotting polygons" ([3593](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3593))
* Update the gallery example for plotting lines with LineString/MultiLineString geometry ([3711](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3711))
* Add the PyGMT ecosystem page ([3475](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3475))
* Document the support policy for optional packages ([3616](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3616))
* Document the environment variables that can affect the behavior of PyGMT ([3432](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3432))
* Document the built-in patterns in the Technical Reference section ([3466](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3466))
* Document Continuous Benchmarking in Maintainers Guides ([3631](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3631))
* Add instructions for installing optional dependencies ([3506](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3506))
* Update "PyData Ecosystem" to "Scientific Python Ecosystem" ([3447](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3447))
* Figure.savefig: Clarify that the "transparent" parameter also works for the PNG file associated with the KML format ([3579](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3579))
* Add the PyGMT talk at AGU24 to the "Overview" section ([3685](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3685))
* Add the GMT/PyGMT pre-conference workshop at AGU24 to the "External resources" section ([3689](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3689))
* Add TODO comments in the maintainers guides and update the release checklist ([3724](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3724))

Maintenance

* **Breaking**: data_kind: data is None and required now returns the "empty" kind ([3482](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3482))
* **Breaking**: data_kind: Now "matrix" represents a 2-D numpy array and unrecognized data types fall back to "vectors" ([3351](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3351))
* Add Support for Python 3.13 ([3490](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3490))
* Add the Session.virtualfile_from_stringio method to allow StringIO input for certain functions/methods ([3326](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3326))
* Add "geodatasets" as a dependency for docs and update the choropleth example ([3719](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3719))
* PyArrow: Check compatibility of pyarrow.array with string type ([2933](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/2933))
* Rename sphinx-gallery's README.txt to GALLERY_HEADER.rst and require Sphinx-Gallery>=0.17.0 ([3348](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3348))
* clib.conversion: Remove the as_c_contiguous function and use np.ascontiguousarray instead ([3492](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3492))
* Use TODO comments to track deprecations and workarounds ([3722](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3722))
* Move Figure.psconvert into a separate file ([3553](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3553))
* Improve the data type checking for 2-D arrays passed to the GMT C API ([3563](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3563))
* Enable ruff's TD (flake8-todos), COM (flake8-commas), TRY (tryceratops), and EM (flake8-errmsg) rules ([3723](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3723), [#3531](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3531), [#3665](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3665), [#3661](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3661))
* CI: Install pyarrow-core instead of pyarrow from conda-forge ([3698](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3698))
* CI: Ensure no hyphens in Python file and directory names in the "Style Checks" workflow ([3703](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3703))
* Bump to ruff>=0.8.0 and rename rule TCH to TC ([3662](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3662))
* Bump to Ghostscript 10.04.0 ([3443](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3443))
* Add enums GridFormat for GMT grid format ID ([3449](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3449))

**Full Changelog**: <https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/compare/v0.13.0...v0.14.0>

Contributors

* [Dongdong Tian](https://github.com/seisman)
* [Yvonne Fröhlich](https://github.com/yvonnefroehlich)
* [Wei Ji Leong](https://github.com/weiji14)
* [Michael Grund](https://github.com/michaelgrund)
* [Will Schlitzer](https://github.com/willschlitzer)
* [Jiayuan Yao](https://github.com/core-man)

---

[](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13679420)

Highlights

* 🎉 **Thirteenth minor release of PyGMT** 🎉
* Add new documentation section "Technical Reference" and document the supported encodings and fonts
* Tutorial for "Draping a dataset on top of a topographic surface" ([3316](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3316))
* Tutorial for "Typesetting non-ASCII characters" ([3389](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3389))

New Features

* Wrap the GMT API function GMT_Read_Data to read data into GMT data containers ([3324](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3324))
* Wrap GMT's standard data type GMT_IMAGE for images ([3338](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3338))

Enhancements

* **Breaking**: pygmt.x2sys_cross: Refactor to use virtualfiles for output tables ([3182](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3182))
* pygmt.show_versions: Warn about incompatible Ghostscript versions ([3244](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3244))
* pygmt.show_versions: Show GDAL version ([3364](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3364), [#3376](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3376))
* pygmt.datasets.load_*: Add autocompletion support for the 'resolution' parameter ([3260](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3260))
* clib.Session: Refactor the `__getitem__` special method to avoid calling API function GMT_Get_Enum repeatedly ([3261](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3261))
* clib: Refactor to avoid checking GMT version repeatedly and only check once when loading the GMT library ([3254](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3254))
* Support non-ASCII characters in ISO-8859-x charsets ([3310](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3310))
* Refactor to improve the user experience with non-ASCII characters ([3206](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3206))

Deprecations

* SPEC 0: Bump minimum supported version to xarray 2022.09 ([3372](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3372))
* SPEC 0: Bump minimum supported version to NumPy 1.24 ([3286](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3286))
* clib: Deprecate API function 'Session.virtualfile_from_data', use 'Session.virtualfile_in' instead (will be removed in v0.15.0) ([3225](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3225))
* Remove the unused pygmt.print_clib_info function ([3257](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3257))
* Figure.timestamp: Remove deprecated parameter 'justification', use 'justify' instead (deprecated since v0.11.0) ([3222](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3222))

Bug Fixes

* pygmt.set_display: Fix the bug that `method=None` doesn't reset to the default display method ([3396](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3396))
* load_tile_map: Register the rio accessor by importing rioxarray, so the returned raster has CRS ([3323](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3323))
* load_tile_map: Fix the raster band indexing, should start from 1 ([3322](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3322))
* load_tile_map: Replace deprecated rio.set_crs with rio.write_crs ([3321](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3321))
* PYGMT_USE_EXTERNAL_DISPLAY should NOT disable image display in Jupyter notebook environment ([3418](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3418))

Documentation

* External Resources: Add tutorial in Portuguese and using PyGMT in Google Colab ([3360](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3360))
* Remove the non-official GMT wrappers from README ([3413](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3413))
* Give recommendations about GMT-Ghostscript incompatibility and the testing example ([3249](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3249))
* Document the supported 35 standard Postscript fonts in the Technical Reference section ([3378](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3378))
* Add an offboarding access checklist for maintainers ([3411](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3411))
* Update the onboarding access checklist in Maintainers Guides ([3404](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3404))
* Add sphinx extension myst-nb to enable writing executable Markdown notebooks ([3379](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3379))

Maintenance

* pygmt.grd2cpt & pygmt.makecpt: Simplify the logic for dealing with CPT output ([3334](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3334))
* geopandas: Use io.StringIO to read geojson data and handle compatibility with geopandas v0.x and v1.x ([3247](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3247))
* Simplify the "Minimum Supported Versions" page using MyST customized URL schemes ([3383](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3383))
* build_arg_list: Raise an exception if an invalid output file name is given ([3336](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3336))
* sphinx-gallery: Temporarily pin to < 0.17.0 ([3350](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3350))
* Run pytest with `--color=yes` to force GitHub Actions logs to have color ([3330](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3330))
* Patch the callback print function to suppress the UnicodeDecodeError ([3367](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3367))
* Move Will from Active Maintainers to Distinguished Contributors ([3388](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3388))
* Enable ruff's unspecified-encoding (PLW1514) rule and fix violations ([3319](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3319))
* Enable ruff's literal-membership (PLR6201) rule and fix violations ([3317](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3317))
* Determine the minimum required versions of dependencies from package metadata for docs ([3380](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3380))
* CI: Use OIDC token for codecov uploading ([3163](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3163))
* CI: Test NumPy 2.1 in the GMT Tests workflow ([3401](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3401))
* CI: Set GMT_ENABLE_OPENMP to TRUE to enable OpenMP support on macOS ([3266](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3266))
* CI: Fix the name of the 'build' package to 'python-build' on conda-forge ([3408](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3408))
* CI: Bump to ubuntu-24.04 and mambaforge-23.11 in ReadTheDocs ([3296](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3296))
* CI: Build GMT dev source code with OpenMP enabled on Linux and GThreads enabled on Linux/macOS ([3011](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3011))
* CI: Add pytest plugins pytest-xdist and pytest-rerunfailures ([3193](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3193), [#3267](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3267))
* Add pre-commit config with pre-commit-hooks and enable pre-commit.ci to update hooks quarterly ([3283](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3283), [#3414](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3414))
* Add a test to make sure PyGMT works with paths that contain non-ASCII characters ([3280](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3280))

**Full Changelog**: <https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/compare/v0.12.0...v0.13.0>

Contributors

* [Dongdong Tian](https://github.com/seisman)
* [Yvonne Fröhlich](https://github.com/yvonnefroehlich)
* [Wei Ji Leong](https://github.com/weiji14)
* [Michael Grund](https://github.com/michaelgrund)
* [Andre L. Belem](https://github.com/andrebelem)

---

[](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11062720)

Highlights

* 🎉 **Twelfth minor release of PyGMT** 🎉
* 🚀 Almost all module wrappers (with a few exceptions) now use in-memory GMT *virtual files* instead of intermediate temporary files to improve performance ([2730](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/issues/2730))
* Almost all module wrappers (with a few exceptions) now have consistent behavior for table-like output ([1318](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/issues/1318))
* Adopt [SPEC 0](https://scientific-python.org/specs/spec-0000/) policy for minimum supported versions of GMT, Python, and other core dependencies

Enhancements

* **Breaking**: (Unneeded) extra double quotes around text strings (containing whitespaces) are now considered as part of the text string ([3132](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3132), [#3457](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/issues/3457))
* pygmt.project: Add 'output_type' parameter for output in pandas/numpy/file formats ([3110](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3110))
* pygmt.grdtrack: Add 'output_type' parameter for output in pandas/numpy/file formats ([3106](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3106))
* pygmt.blockm*: Add 'output_type' parameter for output in pandas/numpy/file formats ([3103](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3103))
* Figure.grdcontour: Adjust processing arguments passed to "annotation" and "interval" parameters ([3116](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3116))
* Figure.contour: Adjust processing arguments passed to "annotation" and "levels" parameters ([2706](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/2706))
* clib: Wrap the GMT API function GMT_Read_VirtualFile ([2993](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/2993))
* clib: Add virtualfile_to_dataset method for converting virtualfile to a dataset ([3083](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3083), [#3140](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3140), [#3157](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3157),
[3117](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3117))
* clib: Add the virtualfile_out method for creating output virtualfile ([3057](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3057))
* Wrap GMT_Inquire_VirtualFile to get the family of virtualfiles ([3152](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3152))
* Wrap GMT's standard data type GMT_GRID for grids ([2398](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/2398))
* Wrap GMT's standard data type GMT_DATASET for table inputs ([2729](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/2729), [#3131](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3131), [#3174](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3174))
* Wrap GMT's data structure GMT_GRID_HEADER for grid/image/cube headers ([3127](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3127), [#3134](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3134))
* Session.call_module: Support passing a list of argument strings ([3139](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3139))
* Refactor the _load_remote_dataset function to load tiled and non-tiled grids in a consistent way ([3120](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3120))
* Refactor all wrappers to pass an argument list to Session.call_module ([3132](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3132))
* Add function build_arg_list for building arguments list from keyword dictionaries ([3149](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3149))
* Support left/right single quotation marks in text and arguments ([3192](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3192))
* non_ascii_to_octal: Return the input string if it only contains printable ASCII characters ([3199](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3199))

Deprecations

* SPEC 0: Set minimum supported versions to Python>=3.10, pandas>=1.5 and xarray>=2022.06 ([3043](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3043), [#3039](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3039), [#3151](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3151))
* Figure.plot/plot3d/rose: Remove deprecated parameter "color", use "fill" instead (deprecated since v0.8.0) ([3032](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3032))
* Figure.velo: Remove deprecated parameters "color"/"uncertaintycolor", use "fill"/"uncertaintyfill" instead (deprecated since v0.8.0) ([3034](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3034))
* Figure.wiggle: Remove deprecated parameter "color", use "fillpositive"/"fillnegative" instead (deprecated since v0.8.0) ([3035](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3035))
* Figure.grdimage: Remove deprecated parameter "bit_color", use "bitcolor" instead (deprecated since v0.8.0) ([3036](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3036))
* Figure: Remove deprecated "xshift" ("X") and "yshift" ("Y") parameters, use "Figure.shift_origin" instead (deprecated since v0.8.0) ([3044](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3044))
* Figure: Remove deprecated "timestamp" ("U") parameter, use "Figure.timestamp" instead (deprecated since v0.9.0) ([3045](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3045))
* clib: Rename the "virtualfile_from_data" method to "virtualfile_in" ([3068](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3068))
* Deprecate the "build_arg_string" function, use build_arg_list instead (deprecated since v0.12.0, will be removed in v0.14.0) ([3184](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3184))
* Deprecate the "sequence_plus" converter, only used for the "annotation" parameter of Figure.grdcontour (deprecated since v0.12.0, will be removed in v0.14.0) ([3207](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3207))
* Figure.grdcontour: Deprecate parameter "interval" to "levels" (FutureWarning since v0.12.0, will be removed in v0.16.0) ([3209](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3209))

Documentation

* External Resources: Add repository "gmt-pygmt-plotting" ([3213](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3213))
* Gallery example "Custom symbols": Mention own custom symbols ([3186](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3186))
* Intro "04 Table inputs": Document that a list of file names, pathlib.Path objects, URLs, or remote files is supported ([3214](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3214))
* Tutorial "Plotting text": Rewrite to improve structure, explain more parameters, show list input ([2760](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/2760))

Maintenance

* pygmt.filter1d: Improve performance by storing output in virtual files ([3085](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3085))
* pygmt.grdvolume: Refactor to store output in virtual files instead of temporary files ([3102](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3102))
* pygmt.grdhisteq.compute_bins: Refactor to store output in virtual files instead of temporary files ([3109](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3109))
* pygmt.grd2xyz: Improve performance by storing output in virtual files ([3097](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3097))
* pygmt.select: Improve performance by storing output in virtual files ([3108](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3108))
* pygmt.triangulate.delaunay_triples: Improve performance by storing output in virtual files ([3107](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3107))
* pygmt.which: Refactor to get rid of temporary files ([3148](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3148))
* Use consistent names (vintbl and vingrd) for input virtual files ([3082](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3082))
* Add sequence_to_ctypes_array to convert a sequence to a ctypes array ([3136](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3136))
* Add strings_to_ctypes_array to convert a sequence of strings into a ctypes array ([3137](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3137))
* Figure.psconvert: Ignore the unrecognized "metadata" parameter added by pytest-mpl v0.17.0 ([3054](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3054))
* Remote Datasets: Adjust attributes - remove "title", use default of "name" and "long_name", introduce "description" ([3048](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3048))
* Adopt SPEC 0 policy and drop NEP 29 policy ([3037](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3037))
* Document the support policy for minimum required GMT versions ([3070](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3070))
* Bump to ghostscript 10.03.0 ([3112](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3112))
* Bump to ruff 0.3.0 ([3081](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3081))
* Enable ruff's PTH (flake8-use-pathlib) rules and fix violations ([3129](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3129))
* Change the dev dependency "matplotlib" to "matplotlib-base" to reduce environment size ([3158](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3158))
* Migrate from os.path to pathlib ([3119](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3119))
* CI: Use "gh release" to upload assets to release ([3187](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3187))
* CI: Consistently use github.token instead of secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN ([3189](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3189))
* CI: Configure workflows to run on "workflow_dispatch" event ([3133](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3133))
* Switch to official GitHub action for managing app tokens ([3165](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/3165))

**Full Changelog**: <https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/compare/v0.11.0...v0.12.0>

Contributors

* [Dongdong Tian](https://github.com/seisman)
* [Yvonne Fröhlich](https://github.com/yvonnefroehlich)
* [Michael Grund](https://github.com/michaelgrund)
* [Wei Ji Leong](https://github.com/weiji14)

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