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| author | John W. Eaton <jwe@octave.org> |
|---|---|
| date | Fri, 27 Feb 2009 12:51:20 -0500 |
| parents | 082c052cdd11 |
| children | 0c7b0049c023 |
| rev | line source |
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1 Summary of important user-visible changes for version 3.2: |
| 5913 | 2 --------------------------------------------------------- |
| 2452 | 3 |
| 8737 | 4 ** Compatibility with Matlab graphics has been improved. |
| 6329 | 5 |
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6 The hggroup object and associated listener callback functions have |
| 8737 | 7 been added allowing the inclusion of group objects. Data sources |
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8 have been added to these group objects such that |
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9 |
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10 x = 0:0.1:10; |
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11 y = sin (x); |
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12 plot (x, y, "ydatasource", "y"); |
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13 for i = 1 : 100 |
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14 pause(0.1) |
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15 y = sin (x + 0.1 * i); |
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16 refreshdata(); |
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17 endfor |
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18 |
| 8737 | 19 works as expected. This capability has be used to introduce |
| 20 stem-series, bar-series, etc. objects for better Matlab | |
| 21 compatibility. | |
| 22 | |
| 23 ** New graphics functions: | |
| 24 | |
| 8747 | 25 addlistener diffuse ezsurfc plotmatrix |
| 26 addproperty ezcontour findall refresh | |
| 27 allchild ezcontourf gcbf refreshdata | |
| 28 available_backends ezmesh gcbo specular | |
| 29 backend ezmeshc ginput surfl | |
| 30 cla ezplot gtext waitforbuttonpress | |
| 31 clabel ezplot3 intwarning | |
| 32 comet ezpolar ishghandle | |
| 33 dellistener ezsurf linkprop | |
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34 |
| 8737 | 35 ** New experimental OpenGL/FLTK based plotting system. |
| 36 | |
| 37 An experimental plotting system based on OpenGL and the FLTK | |
| 38 toolkit is now part of Octave. This backend is disabled by | |
| 39 default. You can switch to using it with the command | |
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40 |
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41 backend ("fltk") |
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42 |
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43 for all future figures or for a particular figure with the command |
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44 |
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45 backend (h, "fltk") |
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46 |
| 8737 | 47 where "h" is a valid figure handle. Please note that this backend |
| 48 does not yet support text objects. Obviously, this is a necessary | |
| 49 feature before it can be considered usable. We are looking for | |
| 50 volunteers to help implement this missing feature. | |
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51 |
| 8737 | 52 ** Functions providing direct access to gnuplot have been removed. |
| 53 | |
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54 The functions __gnuplot_plot__, __gnuplot_set__, __gnuplot_raw__, |
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55 __gnuplot_show__, __gnuplot_replot__, __gnuplot_splot__, |
| 8737 | 56 __gnuplot_save_data__ and __gnuplot_send_inline_data__ have been |
| 57 removed from Octave. These function were incompatible with the | |
| 58 high level graphics handle code. | |
| 6329 | 59 |
| 8885 | 60 ** The Control, Finance and Quaternion functions have been removed. |
| 61 | |
| 62 These functions are now available as separate packages from | |
| 63 | |
| 64 http://octave.sourceforge.net/packages.html | |
| 65 | |
| 66 and can be reinstalled using the Octave package manager (see | |
| 67 the pkg function). | |
| 68 | |
| 69 ** Specific sparse matrix functions removed. | |
| 70 | |
| 71 The following functions, which handled only sparse matrices have | |
| 72 been removed. Instead of calling these functions directly, you | |
| 73 should use the corresponding function without the "sp" prefix. | |
| 8737 | 74 |
| 8885 | 75 spatan2 spcumsum spkron spprod |
| 76 spchol spdet splchol spqr | |
| 77 spchol2inv spdiag splu spsum | |
| 78 spcholinv spfind spmax spsumsqk | |
| 79 spcumprod spinv spmin | |
| 80 | |
| 81 ** Improvements to the debugger. | |
| 82 | |
| 83 The interactive debugging features have been improved. Stopping | |
| 84 on statements with dbstop should work correctly now. Stepping | |
| 85 into and over functions, and stepping one statement at a time | |
| 86 (with dbstep) now works. Moving up and down the call stack with | |
| 87 dbup and dbdown now works. The dbstack function is now available | |
| 88 to print the current function call stack. The new dbquit function | |
| 89 is available to exit the debugging mode. | |
| 90 | |
| 91 ** Improved traceback error messages. | |
| 92 | |
| 93 Traceback error messages are much more concise and easier to | |
| 94 understand. They now display information about the function call | |
| 95 stack instead of the stack of all statements that were active at | |
| 96 the point of the error. | |
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97 |
| 8737 | 98 ** Object Oriented Programming. |
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99 |
| 8737 | 100 Octave now includes OOP features and the user can create their own |
| 101 class objects and overloaded functions and operators. For | |
| 102 example, all methods of a class called "myclass" will be found in | |
| 103 a directory "@myclass" on the users path. The class specific | |
| 104 versions of functions and operators take precedence over the | |
| 105 generic versions of these functions. | |
| 106 | |
| 107 New functions related to OOP include | |
| 7189 | 108 |
| 8737 | 109 class inferiorto isobject loadobj methods superiorto |
| 110 | |
| 111 See the Octave manual for more details. | |
| 7038 | 112 |
| 8747 | 113 ** Parsing of Command-style Functions. |
| 114 | |
| 115 Octave now parses command-style functions without needing to first | |
| 116 declare them with "mark_as_command". The rules for recognizing a | |
| 117 command-style function calls are | |
| 118 | |
| 119 * A command must appear as the first word in a statement, | |
| 120 followed by a space. | |
| 121 | |
| 122 * The first character after the space must not be '=' or '(' | |
| 123 | |
| 124 * The next token after the space must not look like a binary | |
| 125 operator. | |
| 126 | |
| 127 These rules should be mostly compatible with the way Matlab parses | |
| 128 command-style function calls and allow users to define commands in | |
| 129 .m files without having to mark them as commands. | |
| 130 | |
| 131 Note that previous versions of Octave allowed expressions like | |
| 132 | |
| 133 x = load -text foo.dat | |
| 134 | |
| 135 but an expression like this will now generate a parse error. In | |
| 136 order to assign the value returned by a function to a variable, | |
| 137 you must use the normal function call syntax: | |
| 138 | |
| 139 x = load ("-text", "foo.dat"); | |
| 140 | |
| 8737 | 141 ** Block comments. |
| 142 | |
| 8747 | 143 Commented code can be between matching "#{" and "#}" or "%{" and |
| 144 "%}" markers, even if the commented code spans several line. This | |
| 145 allows blocks code to be commented, without needing to comment | |
| 146 each line. For example, | |
| 5814 | 147 |
| 8747 | 148 function [s, t] = func (x, y) |
| 149 s = 2 * x; | |
| 150 #{ | |
| 151 s *= y; | |
| 152 t = y + x; | |
| 153 #} | |
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154 endfunction |
| 5814 | 155 |
| 8747 | 156 the lines "s *= y;" and "t = y + x" will not be executed. |
| 8737 | 157 |
| 158 ** Special treatment in the parser of expressions like "a' * b". | |
| 2452 | 159 |
| 8737 | 160 In these cases the transpose is no longer explicitly formed and |
| 161 BLAS libraries are called with the transpose flagged, | |
| 162 significantly improving performance for these kinds of | |
| 163 operations. | |
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164 |
| 8737 | 165 ** Single Precision data type. |
| 2452 | 166 |
| 8737 | 167 Octave now includes a single precision data type. Single |
| 168 precision variables can be created with the "single" command, or | |
| 169 from function like ones, etc. For example | |
| 5995 | 170 |
| 8737 | 171 single (1) |
| 172 ones (2, 2, "single") | |
| 173 zeros (2, 2, "single") | |
| 174 eye (2, 2, "single") | |
| 175 Inf (2, 2, "single") | |
| 176 NaN (2, 2, "single") | |
| 177 NA (2, 2, "single") | |
| 7279 | 178 |
| 8737 | 179 all create single precision variables. For compatibility with |
| 180 Matlab, mixed double/single precision operators and functions | |
| 181 return single precision types. | |
| 182 | |
| 183 As a consequence of this addition to Octave the internal | |
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184 representation of the double precision NA value has changed, and |
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185 so users that make use of data generated by Octave with R or |
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186 visa-versa are warned that compatibility might not be assured. |
| 7279 | 187 |
| 8737 | 188 ** Improved array indexing. |
| 189 | |
| 190 The underlying code used for indexing of arrays has been | |
| 191 completely rewritten and so the indexing of arrays is now | |
| 192 significantly faster. | |
| 193 | |
| 8755 | 194 ** Improved memory management. |
| 195 | |
| 196 Octave will now attempt to share data in some cases where previously | |
| 197 a copy would be made, such as certain array slicing operations or | |
| 198 conversions between cells, structs and cs-lists. This usually reduces | |
| 199 both time and memory consumption. | |
| 200 | |
| 8738 | 201 ** Improved performance for reduction operations. |
| 202 | |
| 8755 | 203 The performance of the sum, prod, sumsq, cumsum, cumprod, any, all, |
| 204 max and min functions has been significantly improved. | |
| 8738 | 205 |
| 8737 | 206 ** 64-bit integer arithmetic. |
| 207 | |
| 208 Arithmetic with 64-bit integers (int64 and uint64 types) is fully | |
| 209 supported, with saturation semantics like the other integer types. | |
| 210 Performance of most integer arithmetic operations has been | |
| 211 improved by using integer arithmetic directly. Previously, Octave | |
| 212 performed integer math with saturation semantics by converting the | |
| 213 operands to double precision, performing the operation, and then | |
| 214 converting the result back to an integer value, truncating if | |
| 215 necessary. | |
| 216 | |
| 8885 | 217 ** Diagonal and permutation matrices. |
| 218 | |
| 219 The interpreter can now treat diagonal and permutation matrices as | |
| 220 special objects that store only the non-zero elements, rather than | |
| 221 general full matrices. Therefore, it is now possible to construct | |
| 222 and use these matrices in linear algebra without suffering a | |
| 223 performance penalty due to storing large numbers of zero elements. | |
| 224 | |
| 225 ** Improvements to fsolve. | |
| 226 | |
| 227 The fsolve function now accepts an option structure argument (see | |
| 228 also the optimset function). The INFO values returned from fsolve | |
| 229 have changed to be compatible with Matlab's fsolve function. | |
| 230 Additionally, fsolve is now able to solve overdetermined systems, | |
| 231 complex-differentiable complex systems, systems with a sparse | |
| 232 jacobian and can work in single precision if given single precision | |
| 233 inputs. It can also be called recursively. | |
| 234 | |
| 8737 | 235 ** Improvements to the norm function. |
| 236 | |
| 237 The norm function is now able to compute row or column norms of a | |
| 238 matrix in a single call, as well as general matrix p-norms. | |
| 239 | |
| 240 ** New functions for computing some eigenvalues or singular values. | |
| 241 | |
| 242 The eigs and svds functions have been included in Octave. These | |
| 243 functions require the ARPACK library (now distributed under a | |
| 244 GPL-compatible license). | |
| 245 | |
| 246 ** New QR and Cholesky factorization updating functions. | |
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247 |
| 8737 | 248 choldelete cholshift qrdelete qrshift |
| 249 cholinsert cholupdate qrinsert qrupdate | |
| 250 | |
| 251 ** New quadrature functions. | |
| 252 | |
| 253 dblquad quadgk quadv triplequad | |
| 254 | |
| 8885 | 255 ** New functions for reading and writing images. |
| 256 | |
| 257 The imwrite and imread functions have been included in Octave. | |
| 258 These functions require the GraphicsMagick library. The new | |
| 259 function imfinfo provides information about an image file (size, | |
| 260 type, colors, etc.) | |
| 261 | |
| 8737 | 262 ** Other miscellaneous new functions. |
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263 |
| 8779 | 264 addtodate idivide realpow |
| 265 bicgstab info realsqrt | |
| 266 cgs interp1q rectint | |
| 267 command_line_path isdebugmode regexptranslate | |
| 268 contrast isfloat restoredefaultpath | |
| 269 convn isstrprop roundb | |
| 270 cummin log1p rundemos | |
| 271 cummax lsqnonneg runlength | |
| 272 datetick matlabroot saveobj | |
| 273 display namelengthmax spaugment | |
| 274 expm1 nargoutchk strchr | |
| 275 filemarker pathdef strvcat | |
| 276 fstat perl subspace | |
| 277 full prctile symvar | |
| 278 fzero quantile treelayout | |
| 279 genvarname re_read_readline_init_file validatestring | |
| 280 hypot reallog | |
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281 |
| 8885 | 282 ** Changes to strcat. |
| 283 | |
| 284 The strcat function is now compatible with Matlab's strcat | |
| 285 function, which removes trailing whitespace when concatenating | |
| 286 character strings. For example | |
| 287 | |
| 288 strcat ('foo ', 'bar') | |
| 289 ==> 'foobar' | |
| 290 | |
| 291 The new function cstrcat provides the previous behavior of | |
| 292 Octave's strcat. | |
| 293 | |
| 294 ** Improvements to the help functions. | |
| 295 | |
| 296 The help system has been reimplemented mostly in .m files to make | |
| 297 it easier to modify. Performance of the lookfor function has been | |
| 298 greatly improved by caching the help text from all functions that | |
| 299 are distributed with Octave. The pkg function has been modified | |
| 300 to generate cache files for external packages when they are | |
| 301 installed. | |
| 302 | |
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303 See NEWS.3 for old news. |