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annotate NEWS @ 8747:86cfcf133a19
NEWS update
author | John W. Eaton <jwe@octave.org> |
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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. |