Mercurial > octave
annotate NEWS @ 8747:86cfcf133a19
NEWS update
| author | John W. Eaton <jwe@octave.org> |
|---|---|
| date | Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:09:44 -0500 |
| parents | c32e710407ee |
| children | 5a7494ee68a3 |
| 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 |
| 8747 | 35 ** Improvements to the debugger. |
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36 |
| 8737 | 37 The interactive debugging features have been improved. Stopping |
| 38 on statements with dbstop should work correctly now. Stepping | |
| 39 into and over functions, and stepping one statement at a time | |
| 40 (with dbstep) now works. Moving up and down the call stack with | |
| 41 dbup and dbdown now works. The dbstack function is now available | |
| 42 to print the current function call stack. The new dbquit function | |
| 43 is available to exit the debugging mode. | |
| 44 | |
| 45 ** New experimental OpenGL/FLTK based plotting system. | |
| 46 | |
| 47 An experimental plotting system based on OpenGL and the FLTK | |
| 48 toolkit is now part of Octave. This backend is disabled by | |
| 49 default. You can switch to using it with the command | |
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50 |
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51 backend ("fltk") |
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52 |
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53 for all future figures or for a particular figure with the command |
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54 |
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55 backend (h, "fltk") |
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56 |
| 8737 | 57 where "h" is a valid figure handle. Please note that this backend |
| 58 does not yet support text objects. Obviously, this is a necessary | |
| 59 feature before it can be considered usable. We are looking for | |
| 60 volunteers to help implement this missing feature. | |
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61 |
| 8737 | 62 ** Functions providing direct access to gnuplot have been removed. |
| 63 | |
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64 The functions __gnuplot_plot__, __gnuplot_set__, __gnuplot_raw__, |
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65 __gnuplot_show__, __gnuplot_replot__, __gnuplot_splot__, |
| 8737 | 66 __gnuplot_save_data__ and __gnuplot_send_inline_data__ have been |
| 67 removed from Octave. These function were incompatible with the | |
| 68 high level graphics handle code. | |
| 6329 | 69 |
| 8737 | 70 ** Improvements to fsolve. |
| 71 | |
| 72 The fsolve function now accepts an option structure argument (see | |
| 73 also the optimset function). The INFO values returned from fsolve | |
| 74 have changed to be compatible with Matlab's fsolve function. | |
| 8396 | 75 Additionally, fsolve is now able to solve overdetermined systems. |
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76 |
| 8737 | 77 ** Object Oriented Programming. |
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78 |
| 8737 | 79 Octave now includes OOP features and the user can create their own |
| 80 class objects and overloaded functions and operators. For | |
| 81 example, all methods of a class called "myclass" will be found in | |
| 82 a directory "@myclass" on the users path. The class specific | |
| 83 versions of functions and operators take precedence over the | |
| 84 generic versions of these functions. | |
| 85 | |
| 86 New functions related to OOP include | |
| 7189 | 87 |
| 8737 | 88 class inferiorto isobject loadobj methods superiorto |
| 89 | |
| 90 See the Octave manual for more details. | |
| 7038 | 91 |
| 8747 | 92 ** Parsing of Command-style Functions. |
| 93 | |
| 94 Octave now parses command-style functions without needing to first | |
| 95 declare them with "mark_as_command". The rules for recognizing a | |
| 96 command-style function calls are | |
| 97 | |
| 98 * A command must appear as the first word in a statement, | |
| 99 followed by a space. | |
| 100 | |
| 101 * The first character after the space must not be '=' or '(' | |
| 102 | |
| 103 * The next token after the space must not look like a binary | |
| 104 operator. | |
| 105 | |
| 106 These rules should be mostly compatible with the way Matlab parses | |
| 107 command-style function calls and allow users to define commands in | |
| 108 .m files without having to mark them as commands. | |
| 109 | |
| 110 Note that previous versions of Octave allowed expressions like | |
| 111 | |
| 112 x = load -text foo.dat | |
| 113 | |
| 114 but an expression like this will now generate a parse error. In | |
| 115 order to assign the value returned by a function to a variable, | |
| 116 you must use the normal function call syntax: | |
| 117 | |
| 118 x = load ("-text", "foo.dat"); | |
| 119 | |
| 8737 | 120 ** Block comments. |
| 121 | |
| 8747 | 122 Commented code can be between matching "#{" and "#}" or "%{" and |
| 123 "%}" markers, even if the commented code spans several line. This | |
| 124 allows blocks code to be commented, without needing to comment | |
| 125 each line. For example, | |
| 5814 | 126 |
| 8747 | 127 function [s, t] = func (x, y) |
| 128 s = 2 * x; | |
| 129 #{ | |
| 130 s *= y; | |
| 131 t = y + x; | |
| 132 #} | |
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133 endfunction |
| 5814 | 134 |
| 8747 | 135 the lines "s *= y;" and "t = y + x" will not be executed. |
| 8737 | 136 |
| 137 ** The Control, Finance and Quaternion functions have been removed. | |
| 138 | |
| 139 These functions are now available as separate packages from | |
| 140 | |
| 141 http://octave.sourceforge.net/packages.html | |
| 2452 | 142 |
| 8737 | 143 and can be reinstalled using the Octave package manager (see |
| 144 the pkg function). | |
| 145 | |
| 146 ** Special treatment in the parser of expressions like "a' * b". | |
| 2452 | 147 |
| 8737 | 148 In these cases the transpose is no longer explicitly formed and |
| 149 BLAS libraries are called with the transpose flagged, | |
| 150 significantly improving performance for these kinds of | |
| 151 operations. | |
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152 |
| 8737 | 153 ** Single Precision data type. |
| 2452 | 154 |
| 8737 | 155 Octave now includes a single precision data type. Single |
| 156 precision variables can be created with the "single" command, or | |
| 157 from function like ones, etc. For example | |
| 5995 | 158 |
| 8737 | 159 single (1) |
| 160 ones (2, 2, "single") | |
| 161 zeros (2, 2, "single") | |
| 162 eye (2, 2, "single") | |
| 163 Inf (2, 2, "single") | |
| 164 NaN (2, 2, "single") | |
| 165 NA (2, 2, "single") | |
| 7279 | 166 |
| 8737 | 167 all create single precision variables. For compatibility with |
| 168 Matlab, mixed double/single precision operators and functions | |
| 169 return single precision types. | |
| 170 | |
| 171 As a consequence of this addition to Octave the internal | |
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172 representation of the double precision NA value has changed, and |
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173 so users that make use of data generated by Octave with R or |
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174 visa-versa are warned that compatibility might not be assured. |
| 7279 | 175 |
| 8737 | 176 ** Improved array indexing. |
| 177 | |
| 178 The underlying code used for indexing of arrays has been | |
| 179 completely rewritten and so the indexing of arrays is now | |
| 180 significantly faster. | |
| 181 | |
| 8738 | 182 ** Improved performance for reduction operations. |
| 183 | |
| 184 The performance of the sum, prod, sumsq, cumsum, and cumprod | |
| 185 functions has been significantly improved. | |
| 186 | |
| 8737 | 187 ** Diagonal and permutation matrices. |
| 188 | |
| 189 The interpreter can now treat diagonal and permutation matrices as | |
| 190 special objects that store only the non-zero elements, rather than | |
| 191 general full matrices. Therefore, it is now possible to construct | |
| 192 and use these matrices in linear algebra without suffering a | |
| 193 performance penalty due to storing large numbers of zero elements. | |
| 194 | |
| 195 ** 64-bit integer arithmetic. | |
| 196 | |
| 197 Arithmetic with 64-bit integers (int64 and uint64 types) is fully | |
| 198 supported, with saturation semantics like the other integer types. | |
| 199 Performance of most integer arithmetic operations has been | |
| 200 improved by using integer arithmetic directly. Previously, Octave | |
| 201 performed integer math with saturation semantics by converting the | |
| 202 operands to double precision, performing the operation, and then | |
| 203 converting the result back to an integer value, truncating if | |
| 204 necessary. | |
| 205 | |
| 206 ** Improvements to the norm function. | |
| 207 | |
| 208 The norm function is now able to compute row or column norms of a | |
| 209 matrix in a single call, as well as general matrix p-norms. | |
| 210 | |
| 211 ** New functions for reading and writing images. | |
| 212 | |
| 213 The imwrite and imread function have been included in Octave. | |
| 214 These functions require the GraphicsMagick library. The new | |
| 215 function imfinfo provides information about an image file (size, | |
| 216 type, colors, etc.) | |
| 217 | |
| 218 ** New functions for computing some eigenvalues or singular values. | |
| 219 | |
| 220 The eigs and svds functions have been included in Octave. These | |
| 221 functions require the ARPACK library (now distributed under a | |
| 222 GPL-compatible license). | |
| 223 | |
| 224 ** Changes to strcat. | |
| 8292 | 225 |
| 8737 | 226 The strcat function is now compatible with Matlab's strcat |
| 227 function, which removes trailing whitespace when concatenating | |
| 228 character strings. For example | |
| 229 | |
| 230 strcat ('foo ', 'bar') | |
| 231 ==> 'foobar' | |
| 232 | |
| 233 The new function cstrcat provides the previous behavior of | |
| 234 Octave's strcat. | |
| 235 | |
| 236 ** Specific sparse matrix functions removed. | |
| 237 | |
| 238 The following functions, which handled only sparse matrices have | |
| 239 been removed. Instead of calling these functions directly, you | |
| 240 should use the corresponding function without the "sp" prefix. | |
| 241 | |
| 242 spatan2 spcumsum spkron spprod | |
| 243 spchol spdet splchol spqr | |
| 244 spchol2inv spdiag splu spsum | |
| 245 spcholinv spfind spmax spsumsqk | |
| 246 spcumprod spinv spmin | |
| 247 | |
| 248 ** New QR and Cholesky factorization updating functions. | |
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249 |
| 8737 | 250 choldelete cholshift qrdelete qrshift |
| 251 cholinsert cholupdate qrinsert qrupdate | |
| 252 | |
| 253 ** New quadrature functions. | |
| 254 | |
| 255 dblquad quadgk quadv triplequad | |
| 256 | |
| 257 ** Other miscellaneous new functions. | |
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258 |
| 8747 | 259 addtodate info realpow |
| 260 bicgstab interp1q realsqrt | |
| 261 cgs isdebugmode rectint | |
| 262 command_line_path isfloat regexptranslate | |
| 263 contrast isstrprop restoredefaultpath | |
| 264 convn log1p roundb | |
| 265 datetick lsqnonneg rundemos | |
| 266 display matlabroot runlength | |
| 267 expm1 namelengthmax saveobj | |
| 268 filemarker nargoutchk spaugment | |
| 269 fstat pathdef strchr | |
| 270 full perl strvcat | |
| 271 fzero prctile subspace | |
| 272 genvarname quantile symvar | |
| 273 hypot re_read_readline_init_file treelayout | |
| 274 idivide reallog validatestring | |
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275 |
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276 See NEWS.3 for old news. |