Edterm

Features
- **Colored Plots**: edterm now supports colored plots, making data visualization more intuitive and visually appealing.
- **Themes Support**: Users can now select from three themes—transparent, dark, and light—to customize the visual experience according to their preference.
- **Stride Option for Data Reduction**: Added support for stride to reduce the amount of data processed for large edr files, significantly improving interface responsiveness.
- **Expanding Average Plot**: edterm now also plots the expanding average, providing users with more analytical tools for data assessment.
- **Configurable Logging Level**: Users can now choose the logging level directly via command-line arguments, enhancing the debugging and logging flexibility.

For Developers
- **Global Logger Object**: Introduced a global logger object in `edterm.py` to standardize logging throughout the application.
- **.vscode Folder Hidden**: The `.vscode` folder and its contents are now hidden to prevent unintended changes and maintain a clean repository.
- **Basic Testing Facility**: Added a basic testing framework to facilitate development and ensure the reliability of new features.

What's New

- **Enhanced Locale Handling**: The application now ensures that the locale settings are configured correctly at runtime, regardless of the system's default configuration. This update is critical for displaying Unicode characters properly and handling internationalization aspects of the application.

Changes
- **Locale Configuration**: Introduced direct configuration of locale settings using Python's `locale` module. This change ensures that `edterm` can handle locale-dependent operations such as string formatting and sorting correctly, regardless of the user's system locale settings.

What's New
- **Locale Settings Automation:** The script now automatically sets environment variables `LANG` and `LC_ALL` to `en_US.UTF-8` to ensure consistent behavior across different systems. This update addresses issues related to character encoding in various environments, ensuring that plots and text are displayed correctly.

Improvements
- **.gitignore Updates:**
- Added patterns to exclude `.pypirc` files, ensuring that private configuration files are not accidentally committed to the repository.
- Improved the exclusion patterns for miscellaneous files, enhancing security and cleanliness of the code repository.

Documentation Updates
- **README.md Enhancements:**
- Updated the introductory text to provide a clearer description of `edterm`'s purpose and capabilities.
- Added a new section for acknowledgements, thanking contributors and users for their feedback and suggestions, recognizing the community's role in the project's development.

Fixed Issues
- Fixed an issue where certain characters were not rendered properly due to locale configuration discrepancies.

New Features
- **New Build Test Script**: Added a new `build_test.sh` script to automate the build and test process for developers. This script includes several improvements:
- **Dynamic Python Version**: The script now supports a dynamic Python version, which can be easily adjusted at the top of the script.
- **Improved Conda Handling**: The script automatically finds the Conda installation and initializes it.
- **Color-coded Output**: Added color-coded messages for better readability of script output.
- **Cleanup Function**: Introduced a cleanup function to remove the test environment and build artifacts after the build process.
- **Help Function**: Added a help function that provides usage information for the script.
- **Error Handling**: Improved error handling with color coding and additional information.
- **Script Flags**: The script now supports flags like `--clean`, `--no-cleanup`, and `--help` for more control over the build process.

Bug Fixes
- No bug fixes in this release.

Known Issues
- No known issues in this release.

Release Notes for New Version

New Features
- **Conda Recipe**: Added Conda recipe files for easier package management and installation.
- **Gitignore Update**: Updated `.gitignore` to exclude Emacs temporary files, improving developer experience.

Enhancements
- **Dependency Management**: Included dependency on the `panedr` package to extend functionality.

Other Changes
- **Initial Commit**: Established the repository with the necessary initial files and configurations.