web-octave: NEWS-3.8.html comparison

comparison NEWS-3.8.html @ 94:e8fc61e077fc

Merged closed branch "kai" into default.

author	Kai T. Ohlhus <k.ohlhus@gmail.com>
date	Tue, 01 Nov 2016 01:06:10 +0100
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+<pre>
+Summary of important user-visible changes for version 3.8:
+---------------------------------------------------------
+** One of the biggest new features for Octave 3.8 is a graphical user
+interface.  It is the one thing that users have requested most
+often over the last few years and now it is almost ready.  But
+because it is not quite as polished as we would like, we have
+decided to wait until the 4.0.x release series before making the
+GUI the default interface (until then, you can use the --force-gui
+option to start the GUI).
+Given the length of time and the number of bug fixes and
+improvements since the last major release Octave, we also decided
+against delaying the release of all these new improvements any
+longer just to perfect the GUI.  So please enjoy the 3.8 release of
+Octave and the preview of the new GUI.  We believe it is working
+reasonably well, but we also know that there are some obvious rough
+spots and many things that could be improved.
+WE NEED YOUR HELP.  There are many ways that you can help us fix
+the remaining problems, complete the GUI, and improve the overall
+user experience for both novices and experts alike:
+* If you are a skilled software developer, you can help by
+contributing your time to help with Octave's development.  See
+http://octave.org/get-involved.html for more information.
+* If Octave does not work properly, you are encouraged
+report the problems you find.  See http://octave.org/bugs.html
+for more information about how to report problems.
+* Whether you are a user or developer, you can help to fund the
+project.  Octave development takes a lot of time and expertise.
+Your contributions help to ensure that Octave will continue to
+improve.  See http://octave.org/donate.html for more details.
+We hope you find Octave to be useful.  Please help us make it even
+better for the future!
+** Octave now uses OpenGL graphics by default with FLTK widgets.  If
+OpenGL libraries or FLTK widgets are not available when Octave is
+built, gnuplot is used.  You may also choose to use gnuplot for
+graphics by executing the command
+graphics_toolkit ("gnuplot")
+Adding this command to your ~/.octaverc file will set the default
+for each session.
+** Printing or saving figures with OpenGL graphics requires the
+gl2ps library which is no longer distributed with Octave.  The
+software is widely available in most package managers.  If a
+pre-compiled package does not exist for your system, you can find
+the current sources at http://www.geuz.org/gl2ps/.
+** Octave now supports nested functions with scoping rules that are
+compatible with Matlab.  A nested function is one declared and defined
+within the body of another function.  The nested function is only
+accessible from within the enclosing function which makes it one
+method for making private functions whose names do not conflict with those
+in the global namespace (See also subfunctions and private functions).
+In addition, variables in the enclosing function are visible within the
+nested function.  This makes it possible to have a pseudo-global variable
+which can be seen by a group of functions, but which is not visible in
+the global namespace.
+Example:
+function outerfunc (...)
+...
+function nested1 (...)
+...
+function nested2 (...)
+...
+endfunction
+endfunction
+function nested3 (...)
+...
+endfunction
+endfunction
+** Line continuations inside character strings have changed.
+The sequence '...' is no longer recognized as a line continuation
+inside a character string.  A backslash '\' followed by a newline
+character is no longer recognized as a line continuation inside
+single-quoted character strings.  Inside double-quoted character
+strings, a backslash followed by a newline character is still
+recognized as a line continuation, but the backslash character must
+be followed *immediately* by the newline character.  No whitespace or
+end-of-line comment may appear between them.
+** Backslash as a continuation marker outside of double-quoted strings
+is now deprecated.
+Using '\' as a continuation marker outside of double quoted strings
+is now deprecated and will be removed from a future version of
+Octave.  When that is done, the behavior of
+(a \
+b)
+will be consistent with other binary operators.
+** Redundant terminal comma accepted by parser
+A redundant terminal comma is now accepted in matrix
+definitions which allows writing code such as
+[a,...
+b,...
+c,...
+] = deal (1,2,3)
+** Octave now has limited support for named exceptions
+The following syntax is now accepted:
+try
+statements
+catch exception-id
+statements
+end
+The exception-id is a structure with the fields "message" and
+"identifier".  For example
+try
+error ("Octave:error-id", "error message");
+catch myerr
+printf ("identifier: %s\n", myerr.identifier);
+printf ("message:    %s\n", myerr.message);
+end_try_catch
+When classdef-style classes are added to Octave, the exception-id
+will become an MException object.
+** Warning states may now be set temporarily, until the end of the
+current function, using the syntax
+warning STATE ID "local"
+in which STATE may be "on", "off", or "error".  Changes to warning
+states that are set locally affect the current function and all
+functions called from the current scope.  The previous warning state
+is restored on return from the current function.  The "local"
+option is ignored if used in the top-level workspace.
+** Warning IDs renamed:
+Octave:array-as-scalar => Octave:array-to-scalar
+Octave:array-as-vector => Octave:array-to-vector
+** 'emptymatch', 'noemptymatch' options added to regular expressions.
+With this addition Octave now accepts the entire set of Matlab options
+for regular expressions.  'noemptymatch' is the default, but 'emptymatch'
+has certain uses where you need to match an assertion rather than actual
+characters.  For example,
+regexprep ('World', '^', 'Hello ', 'emptymatch')
+=> Hello World
+where the pattern is actually the assertion '^' or start-of-line.
+** For compatibility with Matlab, the regexp, regexpi, and regexprep
+functions now process backslash escape sequences in single-quoted pattern
+strings.  In addition, the regexprep function now processes backslash
+escapes in single-quoted replacement strings.  For example,
+regexprep (str, '\t', '\n')
+would search the variable str for a TAB character (escape sequence \t)
+and replace it with a NEWLINE (escape sequence \n).  Previously the
+expression would have searched for a literal '\' followed by 't' and
+replaced the two characters with the sequence '\', 'n'.
+** A TeX parser has been implemented for the FLTK toolkit and is the default
+for any text object including titles and axis labels.  The TeX parser is
+supported only for display on a monitor, not for printing.
+A quick summary of features:
+Code         Feature     Example             Comment
+-----------------------------------------------------------------
+_            subscript   H_2O                formula for water
+^            exponent    y=x^2               formula for parabola
+\char        symbol      \beta               Greek symbol beta
+\fontname    font        \fontname{Arial}    set Arial font
+\fontsize    fontsize    \fontsize{16}       set fontsize 16
+\color[rgb]  fontcolor   \color[rgb]{1 0 1}  set magenta color
+\bf          bold        \bfBold Text        bold font
+\it          italic      \itItalic Text      italic font
+\sl          slanted     \slOblique Text     slanted font
+\rm          normal      \bfBold\rmNormal    normal font
+{}           group       {\bf Bold}Normal    group objects
+e^{i*\pi} = -1      group objects
+** The m-files in the plot directory have been overhauled.
+The plot functions now produce output that is nearly visually compatible
+with Matlab.  Plot performance has also increased, dramatically for some
+functions such as comet and waitbar.  Finally, the documentation for most
+functions has been updated so it should be clearer both how to use a
+function and when a function is appropriate.
+** The m-files in the image directory have been overhauled.
+The principal benefit is that Octave will now no longer automatically
+convert images stored with integers to doubles.  Storing images as uint8
+or uint16 requires only 1/8 or 1/4 the memory of an image stored using
+doubles.  For certain operations, such as fft2, the image must still be
+converted to double in order to work.
+Other changes include fixes to the way indexed images are read from a
+colormap depending on the image class (integer images have a -1 offset to
+the colormap row number).
+** The imread and imwrite functions have been completely rewritten.
+The main changes relate to the alpha channel, support for reading and
+writing of floating point images, implemented writing of indexed images,
+and appending images to multipage image files.
+The issues that may arise due to backwards incompatibility are:
+* imwrite no longer interprets a length of 2 or 4 in the third dimension
+as grayscale or RGB with alpha channel (a length of 4 will be saved
+as a CMYK image).  Alpha channel must be passed as separate argument.
+* imread will always return the colormap indexes when reading an indexed
+image, even if the colormap is not requested as output.
+* transparency values are now inverted from previous Octave versions
+(0 is for completely transparent instead of completely opaque).
+In addition, the function imformats has been implemented to expand
+reading and writing of images of different formats through imread
+and imwrite.
+** The colormap function now provides new options--"list", "register",
+and "unregister"--to list all available colormap functions, and to
+add or remove a function name from the list of known colormap
+functions.  Packages that implement extra colormaps should use these
+commands with PKG_ADD and PKG_DEL statements.
+** strsplit has been modified to be compatible with Matlab.  There
+are two instances where backward compatibility is broken.
+(1) Delimiters are now string vectors, not scalars.
+Octave's legacy behavior
+strsplit ("1 2, 3", ", ")
+ans =
+{
+[1,1] = 1
+[1,2] = 2
+[1,3] =
+[1,4] = 3
+}
+Matlab compatible behavior
+strsplit ("1 2, 3", ", ")
+ans =
+{
+[1,1] = 1 2
+[1,2] = 3
+}
+(2) By default, Matlab treats consecutive delimiters as a single
+delimiter.  By default, Octave's legacy behavior was to return an
+empty string for the part between the delmiters.
+Where legacy behavior is desired, the call to strsplit() may be
+replaced by ostrsplit(), which is Octave's original implementation of
+strsplit().
+** The datevec function has been extended for better Matlab compatibility.
+It now accepts string inputs in the following numerical formats: 12, 21,
+22, 26, 29, 31.  This is undocumented, but verifiable, Matlab behavior.
+In addition, the default for formats which do not specify a date is
+January 1st of the current year.  The previous default was the current day,
+month, and year.  This may produce changes in existing scripts.
+** The error function and its derivatives has been extended to accept complex
+arguments.  The following functions now accept complex inputs:
+erf  erfc  erfcx
+In addition two new error functions erfi (imaginary error function) and
+dawson (scaled imaginary error function) have been added.
+** The glpk function has been modified to reflect changes in the GLPK
+library.  The "round" and "itcnt" options have been removed.  The
+"relax" option has been replaced by the "rtest" option.  The numeric
+values of error codes and of some options have also changed.
+** The kurtosis function has changed definition to be compatible with
+Matlab.  It now returns the base kurtosis instead of the "excess kurtosis".
+The old behavior can be had by changing scripts to normalize with -3.
+"excess kurtosis" = kurtosis (x) - 3
+** The moment function has changed definition to be compatible with
+Matlab.  It now returns the central moment instead of the raw moment.
+The old behavior can be had by passing the type argument "r" for raw.
+** The default name of the Octave crash dump file is now
+"octave-workspace" instead of "octave-core".  The exact name can
+always be customized with the octave_core_file_name function.
+** A citation command has been added to display information on how to
+cite Octave and packages in publications.  The package system will
+look for and install CITATION files from packages.
+** The java package from Octave Forge is now part of core Octave.  The
+following new functions are available for interacting with Java
+directly from Octave:
+debug_java     java_matrix_autoconversion
+isjava         java_unsigned_autoconversion
+java2mat       javaaddpath
+javaArray      javaclasspath
+javaMethod     javamem
+javaObject     javarmpath
+usejava
+In addition, the following functions that use the Java interface
+are now available (provided that Octave is compiled with support for
+Java enabled):
+helpdlg    listdlg   questdlg
+inputdlg   msgbox    warndlg
+** Other new functions added in 3.8.0:
+atan2d                     erfi             lines
+base64_decode              expint           linsolve
+base64_encode              findfigs         missing_component_hook
+betaincinv                 flintmax         polyeig
+built_in_docstrings_file   fminsearch       prefdir
+cmpermute                  gallery          preferences
+cmunique                   gco              readline_re_read_init_file
+colorcube                  hdl2struct       readline_read_init_file
+copyobj                    history_save     rgbplot
+dawson                     imformats        save_default_options
+dblist                     importdata       shrinkfaces
+desktop                    isaxes           splinefit
+doc_cache_create           iscolormap       stemleaf
+ellipj                     isequaln         strjoin
+ellipke                    jit_debug        struct2hdl
+erfcinv                    jit_enable       tetramesh
+jit_startcnt     waterfall
+** Deprecated functions.
+The following functions were deprecated in Octave 3.4 and have been
+removed from Octave 3.8.
+autocor    dispatch              is_global    setstr
+autocov    fstat                 krylovb      strerror
+betai      gammai                perror       values
+cellidx    glpkmex               replot
+cquad      is_duplicate_entry    saveimage
+The following functions have been deprecated in Octave 3.8 and will
+be removed from Octave 3.12 (or whatever version is the second major
+release after 3.8):
+default_save_options    java_new
+gen_doc_cache           java_set
+interp1q                java_unsigned_conversion
+isequalwithequalnans    javafields
+java_convert_matrix     javamethods
+java_debug              re_read_readline_init_file
+java_get                read_readline_init_file
+java_invoke             saving_history
+The following keywords have been deprecated in Octave 3.8 and will
+be removed from Octave 3.12 (or whatever version is the second major
+release after 3.8):
+static
+The following configuration variables have been deprecated in Octave
+3.8 and will be removed from Octave 3.12 (or whatever version is the
+second major release after 3.8):
+CC_VERSION  (now GCC_VERSION)
+CXX_VERSION (now GXX_VERSION)
+The internal class Octave_map has been deprecated in Octave 3.8 and
+will be removed from Octave 3.12 (or whatever version is the second
+major release after 3.8).  Replacement classes are octave_map
+(struct array) or octave_scalar_map for a single structure.
+</pre>

Mercurial > web-octave

comparison NEWS-3.8.html @ 94:e8fc61e077fc