# HG changeset patch # User John W. Eaton # Date 1235757080 18000 # Node ID 47fb5909519131a8fb6e39db304ddc451711ae57 # Parent 579de77acd909018af491c50ab07f936887f2887 more NEWS file edits diff -r 579de77acd90 -r 47fb59095191 NEWS --- a/NEWS Fri Feb 27 03:31:41 2009 -0500 +++ b/NEWS Fri Feb 27 12:51:20 2009 -0500 @@ -32,23 +32,6 @@ comet ezpolar ishghandle dellistener ezsurf linkprop - ** Improvements to the debugger. - - The interactive debugging features have been improved. Stopping - on statements with dbstop should work correctly now. Stepping - into and over functions, and stepping one statement at a time - (with dbstep) now works. Moving up and down the call stack with - dbup and dbdown now works. The dbstack function is now available - to print the current function call stack. The new dbquit function - is available to exit the debugging mode. - - ** Improved traceback error messages. - - Traceback error messages are much more concise and easier to - understand. They now display information about the function call - stack instead of the stack of all statements that were active at - the point of the error. - ** New experimental OpenGL/FLTK based plotting system. An experimental plotting system based on OpenGL and the FLTK @@ -74,15 +57,43 @@ removed from Octave. These function were incompatible with the high level graphics handle code. - ** Improvements to fsolve. + ** The Control, Finance and Quaternion functions have been removed. + + These functions are now available as separate packages from + + http://octave.sourceforge.net/packages.html + + and can be reinstalled using the Octave package manager (see + the pkg function). + + ** Specific sparse matrix functions removed. + + The following functions, which handled only sparse matrices have + been removed. Instead of calling these functions directly, you + should use the corresponding function without the "sp" prefix. - The fsolve function now accepts an option structure argument (see - also the optimset function). The INFO values returned from fsolve - have changed to be compatible with Matlab's fsolve function. - Additionally, fsolve is now able to solve overdetermined systems, - complex-differentiable complex systems, systems with a sparse - jacobian and can work in single precision if given single precision - inputs. It can also be called recursively. + spatan2 spcumsum spkron spprod + spchol spdet splchol spqr + spchol2inv spdiag splu spsum + spcholinv spfind spmax spsumsqk + spcumprod spinv spmin + + ** Improvements to the debugger. + + The interactive debugging features have been improved. Stopping + on statements with dbstop should work correctly now. Stepping + into and over functions, and stepping one statement at a time + (with dbstep) now works. Moving up and down the call stack with + dbup and dbdown now works. The dbstack function is now available + to print the current function call stack. The new dbquit function + is available to exit the debugging mode. + + ** Improved traceback error messages. + + Traceback error messages are much more concise and easier to + understand. They now display information about the function call + stack instead of the stack of all statements that were active at + the point of the error. ** Object Oriented Programming. @@ -144,15 +155,6 @@ the lines "s *= y;" and "t = y + x" will not be executed. - ** The Control, Finance and Quaternion functions have been removed. - - These functions are now available as separate packages from - - http://octave.sourceforge.net/packages.html - - and can be reinstalled using the Octave package manager (see - the pkg function). - ** Special treatment in the parser of expressions like "a' * b". In these cases the transpose is no longer explicitly formed and @@ -201,14 +203,6 @@ The performance of the sum, prod, sumsq, cumsum, cumprod, any, all, max and min functions has been significantly improved. - ** Diagonal and permutation matrices. - - The interpreter can now treat diagonal and permutation matrices as - special objects that store only the non-zero elements, rather than - general full matrices. Therefore, it is now possible to construct - and use these matrices in linear algebra without suffering a - performance penalty due to storing large numbers of zero elements. - ** 64-bit integer arithmetic. Arithmetic with 64-bit integers (int64 and uint64 types) is fully @@ -220,48 +214,35 @@ converting the result back to an integer value, truncating if necessary. + ** Diagonal and permutation matrices. + + The interpreter can now treat diagonal and permutation matrices as + special objects that store only the non-zero elements, rather than + general full matrices. Therefore, it is now possible to construct + and use these matrices in linear algebra without suffering a + performance penalty due to storing large numbers of zero elements. + + ** Improvements to fsolve. + + The fsolve function now accepts an option structure argument (see + also the optimset function). The INFO values returned from fsolve + have changed to be compatible with Matlab's fsolve function. + Additionally, fsolve is now able to solve overdetermined systems, + complex-differentiable complex systems, systems with a sparse + jacobian and can work in single precision if given single precision + inputs. It can also be called recursively. + ** Improvements to the norm function. The norm function is now able to compute row or column norms of a matrix in a single call, as well as general matrix p-norms. - ** New functions for reading and writing images. - - The imwrite and imread functions have been included in Octave. - These functions require the GraphicsMagick library. The new - function imfinfo provides information about an image file (size, - type, colors, etc.) - ** New functions for computing some eigenvalues or singular values. The eigs and svds functions have been included in Octave. These functions require the ARPACK library (now distributed under a GPL-compatible license). - ** Changes to strcat. - - The strcat function is now compatible with Matlab's strcat - function, which removes trailing whitespace when concatenating - character strings. For example - - strcat ('foo ', 'bar') - ==> 'foobar' - - The new function cstrcat provides the previous behavior of - Octave's strcat. - - ** Specific sparse matrix functions removed. - - The following functions, which handled only sparse matrices have - been removed. Instead of calling these functions directly, you - should use the corresponding function without the "sp" prefix. - - spatan2 spcumsum spkron spprod - spchol spdet splchol spqr - spchol2inv spdiag splu spsum - spcholinv spfind spmax spsumsqk - spcumprod spinv spmin - ** New QR and Cholesky factorization updating functions. choldelete cholshift qrdelete qrshift @@ -271,6 +252,13 @@ dblquad quadgk quadv triplequad + ** New functions for reading and writing images. + + The imwrite and imread functions have been included in Octave. + These functions require the GraphicsMagick library. The new + function imfinfo provides information about an image file (size, + type, colors, etc.) + ** Other miscellaneous new functions. addtodate idivide realpow @@ -291,4 +279,25 @@ genvarname re_read_readline_init_file validatestring hypot reallog + ** Changes to strcat. + + The strcat function is now compatible with Matlab's strcat + function, which removes trailing whitespace when concatenating + character strings. For example + + strcat ('foo ', 'bar') + ==> 'foobar' + + The new function cstrcat provides the previous behavior of + Octave's strcat. + + ** Improvements to the help functions. + + The help system has been reimplemented mostly in .m files to make + it easier to modify. Performance of the lookfor function has been + greatly improved by caching the help text from all functions that + are distributed with Octave. The pkg function has been modified + to generate cache files for external packages when they are + installed. + See NEWS.3 for old news.