Mercurial > hg > octave-nkf
annotate etc/NEWS.3 @ 18174:b72bcf5f78cc stable release-3-8-0
Version 3.8.0 released.
* configure.ac (OCTAVE_VERSION): Now 3.8.0.
(OCTAVE_RELEASE_DATE): Now 2013-12-27.
| author | John W. Eaton <jwe@octave.org> |
|---|---|
| date | Fri, 27 Dec 2013 16:59:04 -0500 |
| parents | b67c2d580a25 |
| children | 46c131e5676e 446c46af4b42 |
| rev | line source |
|---|---|
| 5913 | 1 Summary of important user-visible changes for version 3.0: |
| 2 --------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 2452 | 3 |
| 6329 | 4 ** Compatibility with Matlab graphics is much better now. We now |
| 5 have some graphics features that work like Matlab's Handle | |
| 6 Graphics (tm): | |
| 7 | |
| 8 + You can make a subplot and then use the print function to | |
| 7038 | 9 generate a file with the plot. |
| 6329 | 10 |
| 11 + RGB line colors are supported if you use gnuplot 4.2. Octave | |
| 6426 | 12 can still use gnuplot 4.0, but there is no way to set arbitrary |
| 6329 | 13 line colors with it when using the Matlab-style plot functions. |
| 6426 | 14 There never was any way to do this reliably with older versions |
| 15 of gnuplot (whether run from Octave or not) since it only | |
| 16 provided a limited set to choose from, and they were terminal | |
| 17 dependent, so choosing color 1 with the X11 terminal would be | |
| 6465 | 18 different from color 1 with the PostScript terminal. Valid RGB |
| 19 colors for gnuplot 4.0 are the eight possible combinations of 0 | |
| 20 and 1 for the R, G and B values. Invalid values are all mapped | |
| 21 to the same color. | |
| 6329 | 22 |
| 7189 | 23 This also affects patch objects used in the bar, countour, meshc |
| 24 and surfc functions, where the bars and contours will be | |
| 25 monochrome. A workaround for this is to type "colormap gmap40" | |
| 26 that loads a colormap that in many cases will be adequate for | |
| 27 simple bar and contour plots. | |
| 28 | |
| 6329 | 29 + You can control the width of lines using (for example): |
| 30 | |
| 31 line (x, y, "linewidth", 4, "color", [1, 0, 0.5]); | |
| 32 | |
| 33 (this also shows the color feature). | |
| 34 | |
| 35 + With gnuplot 4.2, image data is plotted with gnuplot and may be | |
| 36 combined with other 2-d plot data. | |
| 37 | |
| 38 + Lines for contour plots are generated with an Octave function, so | |
| 39 contour plots are now 2-d plots instead of special 3-d plots, and | |
| 40 this allows you to plot additional 2-d data on top of a contour | |
| 41 plot. | |
| 42 | |
| 7189 | 43 + With the gnuplot "extended" terminals the TeX interpreter is |
| 44 emulated. However, this means that the TeX interpreter is only | |
| 45 supported on the postscript terminals with gnuplot 4.0. Under | |
| 46 gnuplot 4.2 the terminals aqua, dumb, png, jpeg, gif, pm, windows, | |
| 47 wxt, svg and x11 are supported as well. | |
| 48 | |
| 7038 | 49 + The following plot commands are now considered obsolete and will |
| 50 be removed from a future version of Octave: | |
| 51 | |
| 52 __gnuplot_set__ | |
| 53 __gnuplot_show__ | |
| 54 __gnuplot_plot__ | |
| 55 __gnuplot_splot__ | |
| 56 __gnuplot_replot__ | |
| 57 | |
| 58 Additionally, these functions no longer have any effect on plots | |
| 59 created with the Matlab-style plot commands (plot, line, mesh, | |
| 60 semilogx, etc.). | |
| 6329 | 61 |
| 62 + Plot property values are not extensively checked. Specifying | |
|
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013cd94d8d7f
doc: Spelling fixes for various documentation files
John Bradshaw <john@johnbradshaw.org>
parents:
7990
diff
changeset
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63 invalid property values may produce unpredictable results. |
| 6329 | 64 |
| 6835 | 65 + Octave now sends data over the same pipe that is used to send |
| 6834 | 66 commands to gnuplot. While this avoids the problem of |
| 67 cluttering /tmp with data files, it is no longer possible to use | |
| 68 the mouse to zoom in on plots. This is a limitation of gnuplot, | |
| 69 which is unable to zoom when the data it plots is not stored in | |
| 7038 | 70 a file. Some work has been done to fix this problem in newer |
| 71 versions of gnuplot (> 4.2.2). See for example, this thread | |
| 72 | |
| 73 http://www.nabble.com/zooming-of-inline-data-tf4357017.html#a12416496 | |
| 74 | |
| 75 on the gnuplot development list. | |
| 6329 | 76 |
| 7279 | 77 |
| 5814 | 78 ** The way Octave handles search paths has changed. Instead of |
| 79 setting the built-in variable LOADPATH, you must use addpath, | |
| 80 rmpath, or path to manipulate the function search path. These | |
| 81 functions will maintain "." at the head of the path, for | |
| 82 compatibility with Matlab. | |
| 83 | |
| 84 Leading, trailing or doubled colons are no longer special. | |
| 85 Now, all elements of the search path are explicitly included in | |
| 86 the path when Octave starts. To display the path, use the path | |
| 87 function. | |
| 88 | |
| 89 Path elements that end in // are no longer searched recursively. | |
| 90 Instead, you may use addpath and the genpath function to add an | |
| 91 entire directory tree to the path. For example, | |
| 92 | |
| 93 addpath (genpath ("~/octave")); | |
| 94 | |
| 95 will add ~/octave and all directories below it to the head of the | |
| 96 path. | |
| 97 | |
| 98 | |
| 99 ** Previous versions of Octave had a number of built-in variables to | |
| 5781 | 100 control warnings (for example, warn_divide_by_zero). These |
| 101 variables have been replaced by warning identifiers that are used | |
| 5794 | 102 with the warning function to control the state of warnings. |
| 103 | |
| 104 For example, instead of writing | |
| 2511 | 105 |
| 5781 | 106 warn_divide_by_zero = false; |
| 2452 | 107 |
| 5781 | 108 to disable divide-by-zero warnings, you should write |
| 2452 | 109 |
| 5781 | 110 warning ("off", "Octave:divide-by-zero"); |
| 2452 | 111 |
| 5781 | 112 You may use the same technique in your own code to control |
| 113 warnings. For example, you can use | |
| 2452 | 114 |
| 5781 | 115 warning ("My-package:phase-of-the-moon", |
| 116 "the phase of the moon could cause trouble today"); | |
| 2452 | 117 |
| 5781 | 118 to allow users to control this warning using the |
| 119 "My-package:phase-of-the-moon" warning identifier. | |
| 2452 | 120 |
| 5781 | 121 You may also enable or disable all warnings, or turn them into |
| 122 errors: | |
| 2452 | 123 |
| 5781 | 124 warning ("on", "all"); |
| 125 warning ("off", "all"); | |
| 126 warning ("error", "Octave:divide-by-zero"); | |
| 127 warning ("error", "all"); | |
| 2452 | 128 |
| 5781 | 129 You can query the state of current warnings using |
| 2452 | 130 |
| 5781 | 131 warning ("query", ID) |
| 132 warning ("query") | |
| 2452 | 133 |
| 5781 | 134 (only those warning IDs which have been explicitly set are |
| 135 returned). | |
| 2459 | 136 |
| 5781 | 137 A partial list and description of warning identifiers is available |
| 138 using | |
| 2452 | 139 |
| 5781 | 140 help warning_ids |
| 2452 | 141 |
| 142 | |
| 5814 | 143 ** All built-in variables have been converted to functions. This |
| 5794 | 144 change simplifies the interpreter and allows a consistent |
| 145 interface to internal variables for user-defined packages and the | |
| 146 core functions distributed with Octave. In most cases, code that | |
| 147 simply accesses internal variables does not need to change. Code | |
| 148 that sets internal variables will change. For example, instead of | |
| 149 writing | |
| 150 | |
| 151 PS1 = ">> "; | |
| 152 | |
| 153 you will need to write | |
| 154 | |
| 155 PS1 (">> "); | |
| 156 | |
| 5798 | 157 If you need write code that will run in both old and new versions |
| 158 of Octave, you can use something like | |
| 159 | |
| 160 if (exist ("OCTAVE_VERSION") == 5) | |
| 161 ## New: | |
| 162 PS1 (">> "); | |
| 163 else | |
| 164 ## Old: | |
| 165 PS1 = ">> "; | |
| 166 endif | |
| 5794 | 167 |
| 168 | |
| 5995 | 169 ** For compatibility with Matlab, the output order of Octave's |
| 170 "system" function has changed from | |
| 171 | |
| 172 [output, status] = system (cmd); | |
| 173 | |
| 174 to | |
| 175 | |
| 176 [status, output] = system (cmd); | |
| 177 | |
| 7279 | 178 |
| 179 ** For compatibility with Matlab, the output of Octave's fsolve | |
| 180 function has been changed from | |
| 181 | |
| 182 [x, info, msg] = fsolve (...); | |
| 183 | |
| 184 to | |
| 185 | |
| 186 [x, fval, info] = fsolve (...); | |
| 187 | |
| 188 | |
| 6617 | 189 ** For compatibility with Matlab, normcdf, norminv, normpdf, and |
| 190 normrnd have been modified to compute distributions using the | |
| 191 standard deviation instead of the variance. | |
| 5995 | 192 |
| 7279 | 193 |
| 6777 | 194 ** For compatibility with Matlab, gamcdf, gaminv, gampdf, gamrnd, |
| 195 expcdf, expinv, exppdf and exprnd have been modified to compute | |
| 196 the distributions using the standard scale factor rather than | |
| 197 one over the scale factor. | |
| 198 | |
| 7279 | 199 |
| 5781 | 200 See NEWS.2 for old news. |