Chaosmagpy

**Version of CHAOS:** CHAOS-7.8 (0708)

Features
---------
* Added matplotlib's plot_directive for sphinx and added more examples to a
new gallery section in the documentation.
* Added `chaosmagpy.model_utils.pp_from_bspline` to convert the spline
coefficients from B-spline to PP format.
* Changed the way piecewise polynomials are produced from the coefficients in
shc-files. A B-spline representation is now created in an intermediate step
to ensure coefficient time series that are smooth.
* Changed the number format to ``'16.8f'`` when writing shc-files to increase
precision.
* Configuration parameters in ``chaosmagpy.basicConfig`` are now saved to and
loaded from a json-formatted txt-file.
* Added keyword arguments to `chaosmagpy.chaos.CHAOS.synth_coeffs_sm`
and `chaosmagpy.chaos.CHAOS.synth_values_sm` to provide the RC-index
values directly instead of using the built-in RC-index file.

**Version of CHAOS:** CHAOS-7.6 (0706)

Features
---------
* Added new usage sections to the documentation

Bugfixes
---------
* Fixed broken link to RC-index file (GitHub issue 5).
* Added lxml to installation instructions
(needed for webpage requests, optional).
* Require hdf5storage version 0.1.17 (fixed read/write intent)

**Version of CHAOS:** CHAOS-7.5 (0705)

Features
---------
* Modified "nio" colormap to be white-centered.
* Added spatial power spectrum of toroidal sources
(*chaosmagpy.model_utils.power_spectrum*)

**Version of CHAOS:** CHAOS-7.3 (0703)

Features
---------
* Updated RC-index file to RC_1997-2020_Aug_v4.dat.
* Model name defaults to the filename it was loaded from.
* Added function to read the COV-OBS.x2 model
(*chaosmagpy.chaos.load_CovObs_txtfile*) from a text file.
* Added function to read the gufm1 model
(*chaosmagpy.chaos.load_gufm1_txtfile*) from a text file.
* Added class method to initialize *chaosmagpy.chaos.BaseModel* from a
B-spline representation.

**Version of CHAOS:** CHAOS-7.2 (0702)

News
------
The version identifier of the CHAOS model using ``x``, which stands for an
extension of the model, has been replaced in favor of a simple version
numbering. For example, ``CHAOS-6.x9`` is the 9th extension of the CHAOS-6
series. But starting with the release of the CHAOS-7 series, the format
``CHAOS-7.1`` has been adopted to indicate the first release of the series,
``CHAOS-7.2`` the second release (formerly the first extension) and so on.

Features
---------
* Updated RC-index file to RC_1997-2020_Feb_v4.dat.
* Removed version keyword of `chaosmagpy.chaos.CHAOS` to avoid
confusion.
* Added ``verbose`` keyword to the ``call`` method of
`chaosmagpy.chaos.CHAOS` class to avoid printing messages.
* Added `chaosmagpy.data_utils.timestamp` function to convert modified
Julian date to NumPy's datetime format.
* Added more examples to the `chaosmagpy.chaos.CHAOS` methods.
* Added optional ``nmin`` and ``mmax`` to
`chaosmagpy.model_utils.design_gauss` and
`chaosmagpy.model_utils.synth_values` (nmin has been redefined).
* Added optional derivative to :func:`chaosmagpy.model_utils.colloc_matrix`
of the B-Spline collocation.
New implementation does not have the missing endpoint problem.
* Added ``satellite`` keyword to change default satellite names when loading
CHAOS mat-file.

This is an update of the previous version ChaosMagPy v0.2 which fixes a problem in the function "zenith_angle" for computing the zenith angle of the sun. This bug did not have any effect on the CHAOS class used for the CHAOS model forward calculation.