What's new in Cartopy 0.5 ************************* :Release: 0.5.0 :Date: ?? ???, 2012 This document explains the new/changed features of Cartopy in version 0.5. Release 0.5 of Cartopy continues the work to expand the feature-set of Cartopy to encompass common operations, and provide performance improvements. Cartopy 0.5 features ==================== A summary of the main features added with version 0.5: * An improved feature API to support future expansion and sophistication, and a wider range of pre-defined Natural Earth datasets. Incompatible changes -------------------- None Deprecations ------------ * The method :meth:`Axes.natural_earth_shp()` has been replaced by the method :meth:`Axes.add_feature()` and the :mod:`cartopy.feature` module. Feature API =========== Features (i.e. collections of lines and polygons) are now added to a map via the :meth:`~cartopy.mpl.geoaxes.GeoAxes.add_feature` method. Pre-defined features exist for the small-scale (1:110m) `Natural Earth `_ datasets detailed below: =========== ================================================== Name Description =========== ================================================== BORDERS Country boundaries. COASTLINE Coastline, including major islands. LAKES Natural and artificial lakes. LAND Land polygons, including major islands. OCEAN Ocean polygons. RIVERS Single-line drainages, including lake centerlines. =========== ================================================== But any Natural Earth dataset can easily be used by creating an instance of :class:`cartopy.feature.NaturalEarthFeature`. For example, one can draw a map of Africa demonstrating all of the pre-defined features with the following code: .. literalinclude:: features.py .. plot:: features.py