OxCal Development

Version 3.10 (09/02/05)

• Changes to extend the range of the calibration curve at standard resolution
• Changes to accept the new format of the IntCal04 calibration curve
• Fix of bug giving wrong results with Gap nested within Combine groupings (introduced in v3.7 while fixing another problem)

Version 3.9 (10/06/03)

• Minor changes to overcome bugs with long filenames and comments
• Fix for a bug resulting in incorrect axis scales on correlation plots
• Changed R_simulate to take into account uncertainty in the calibration curve (also implemented in versions prior to 3.3).  This should be better for most simulations but will lead to excessive scatter when there are many dates within the same decade

Version 3.8 (30/07/02)

• Allows calibration using atmospheric data sets for period >1950 (data not provided)
• Command line version of program distributed for batch processing

Version 3.7 (05/12/01) - not for general release

• Fixed bug which gave cumulative rounding errors on very long D_Sequence calculations when the resolution was not set to 1 (or to some common factor of all the gaps)
• Allowed for greater variation in the calibration curve prior to 20,000BP

Version 3.6 (27/07/00) - released to those with problems

• Modification to allow operation on computers with no write access to the Windows directory

Version 3.5 (19/07/00)

• Added Wizard for applying Delta_R and reservoir corrections to calibration curves
• Choice of specific rounding resolution
• Choice of initial iteration number for MCMC sampling (max 30,000,000)
• Raised upper limit of MCMC sampling to 100,000,000 iterations
• Minimum chi-squared value now reported with Wiggle matches (D_Sequence).
• Bug associated with specification of data files (Priors) fixed
• Display bugs associated with printing and copying fixed

Version 3.4 (28/04/00)

• Various bug fixes
• Addition of wizard to help with mixed curves

Version 3.4 (beta1) (30/03/00)

• Addition of Mixed calibration curves
• Several bug fixes on the plotting routine
• Improved access to the help system
• Input and output wizards to help with frequently used operations
• Clarification (?) of user interface

Version 3.3 - release (21/09/99)

• Fix of bug in v3.2/3.3(beta1) relating to empty uniform phases
• Fix of other minor cosmetic bugs
• Further optimisation of MCMC sampling procedures
• Correction of a few errors in the manual

Version 3.3(beta1) (17/09/99)

• Updating of manual
• Incorporation of auto-boundaries
• Fixing of TAQ/TPQ bug introduced into version 3.2
• Fixing of various display bugs
• Further improvement of calibration algorithm for plateaux

Version 3.2 (06/07/99)

• Substantially rewritten display program - abondons OLE embedding as this caused many reliability problems
• Improved treatment of TAQ/TPQ for multiple events
• Allowance for XReferences of Boundaries
• Fixing of calibration bug (incorrect treatment of variable calibration curve errors)
• Incorporation of IntCal98 data-set.

Version 3beta (20/1/98)

• Substantially re-written user interface. Full 32-bit Windows95 software based on Microsoft Foundation Classes.
• Many bug fixes
• All calculations now in floating point rather than integer form
• Plots OLE compatible with alterable axes, labels etc.
• Too many detailed changes to list.

Version 2.18 (11/9/95)

• D_SEQ now works correctly with ORDER and DIFF
• A bug which prevented the menu item [Options|Calibration curve] from being used from within a multiplot was sorted out
• Improvements to the manual: the mathematical parts should now print properly and there is updated information on the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Lab

Version 2.17 (24/7/95)

• No change in the calculations from v2.15
• Serious bug in Windows interface finally found - this made the program unusable on some machines with some combinations of programs. Unfortunately this problem never manifested itself on any of our computers - apologies for the delay in fixing this.
• The Y axis label on calibration plots has been changed from Radiocarbon date to Radiocarbon determination

Version 2.16 (8/4/95)

• No fundamental change from v2.15 but ability to cope with longer strings and filenames
• Improved X-axis handling when pasting plots into other documents.

Version 2.15 (14/4/95)

• The manual and examples have been updated to stress the point that radiocarbon dates for a single event should, in general, be combined before calibration using R_COMB not after calibration using COMB.
• Correction of a fault which occasionally affected BOUND calculations; this resulted in unbounded ranges and truncated distributions for boundaries at the end of phases; the problem is believed to have been introduced in version 2.14 while attempting to fix another bug.
• Improved copying and pasting into other documents without large areas of blank space; for use with this, there are options to miss off the X-axis label and agreement indices to give clearer plots.
• Posterior distributions in multiplots are now shown with italic labels instead of the `@' sign (this is optional).
• Reversing the order no longer changes the order of the calculations but only what is plotted in sequences; this was to clear up problems with multiple calibration curves.
• A few minor display related bugs have been eliminated.

Version 2.14 (8/2/95)

• Correction of a bug which occasionally affected BOUND calculations.
• Correction of a possible bug affecting open ended ranges (such as dates close to the end of the calibration curve).

Version 2.13 (3/2/95)

• Option to round ranges
• Subranges with probabilities less than 1% of total range omitted
• Ability to generate calibration curves for systems with simple reservoir effects (RESERV)
• Ability to generate local marine calibration curves using DELTA_R values along with a one of the modeled world ocean marine curves

Version 2.12 (17/1/95)

• Some low level bug fixes
• Option to use different calibration curves for different samples using CURVE
• Improvements to the manual including help on the menu structure

Version 2.11 (4/1/95)

• Area normalisation on multi-plots

Version 2.10 (8/12/94)

• Uniform phases (BOUND) containing sequences are treated correctly
• Bug related to ordering of FIRST and LAST elements corrected
• ORDER function reports a matrix showing the order of pairs of events
• Sums (SUM) are treated as phases rather than events - a sum of distributions gives a chronological distribution for several events and should therefore not be treated as for a single event.
• Alignment grid added to plots (optional)
• BP label added to radiocarbon date labels
• Options added for font style and size
• Improved control over axes using AXIS
• Direct access to help from the program
• Improved file handling enables working directory to be different from program directory - this should make networking easier

Version 2.01 (28/9/94)

• No change to calculations or modelling
• Program recompiled with some possible low level bugs removed
• Windows help file manual added

Version 2.00 (1/8/94)

• First official release

Proposed or Requested changes

• Bug fixes
• Linear deposition model
• Plotting of distributions against depth
• Direct dating of boundaries
• Exponential model
• Ability to model systematic offsets
• Display of archaeological periods with the Calendar year axis
• Plots against Oxygen isotope records and other chronological data