November 26, 2020
News for version 6 5 4.4 4.2 4 3.8 3.6 3.4 3.2 3 2 1 (Release History)
The intersect, setdiff, setxor, union, and unique functions
accept a new sorting option "stable" which will return output values
in the same order as the input, rather than in ascending order.
Complex RESTful web services can now be accessed by the webread and
webwrite functions alongside with the weboptions structure. One
major feature is the support for cookies to enable RESTful
communication with the web service.
Additionally, the system web browser can be opened by the web
function.
The linspace function now produces symmetrical sequences when the
endpoints are symmetric. This is more intuitive and also compatible
with recent changes made in Matlab R2019b.
The underlying algorithm of the rand function has been changed.
For single precision outputs, the algorithm has been fixed so that it
produces values strictly in the range (0, 1). Previously, it could
occasionally generate the right endpoint value of 1 (See
bug #41742). In addition,
the new implementation uses a uniform interval between floating
point values in the range (0, 1) rather than targeting a uniform
density (# of random integers / length along real number line).
Numerical integration has been improved. The quadv function has
been re-written so that it can compute integrands of periodic
functions. At the same time, performance is better with ~3.5X fewer
function evaluations required. A bug in quadgk that caused complex
path integrals specified with "Waypoints" to occasionally be
calculated in the opposite direction was fixed.
The edit function option "editinplace" now defaults to true and
the option "home" now defaults to the empty matrix []. Files will
no longer be copied to the user’s HOME directory for editing. The old
behavior can be restored by setting "editinplace" to false and
"home" to "~/octave".
The format command supports two new options: uppercase and
lowercase (default). With the default, print a lowercase ‘e’ for
the exponent character in scientific notation and lowercase ‘a-f’ for
the hex digits representing 10-15. With uppercase, print ‘E’ and
‘A-F’ instead. The previous uppercase formats, E and G, no longer
control the case of the output.
Additionally, the format command can be called with multiple options
for controlling the format, spacing, and case in arbitrary order.
For example:
format long e uppercase loose
Note, in the case of multiple competing format options the rightmost one is used, and, in case of an error, the previous format remains unchanged.
L-value references (e.g., increment (++), decrement (–), and all in-place assignment operators (+=, -=, *=, /=, etc.)) are no longer allowed in anonymous functions.
New warnings have been added about questionable uses of the colon ‘:’ range operator. Each has a new warning ID so that it can be disabled if desired.
Octave:colon-complex-argument : when any arg is complexOctave:colon-nonscalar-argument : when any arg is non-scalar
The regexp and related functions now correctly handle and require
strings in UTF-8 encoding. As with any other function that requires
strings to be encoded in Octave’s native encoding, you can use
native2unicode to convert from your preferred locale. For example,
the copyright symbol in UTF-8 is native2unicode (169, "latin1").
The startup file octaverc can now be located in the platform
dependent location for user local configuration files (e.g.,
${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/octave/octaverc on Unix-like operating systems or
%APPDATA%\octave\octaverc on Windows).
The command
dbstop in CLASS at METHOD
now works to set breakpoints in classdef constructors and methods.
The use of Qt4 for graphics and the GUI is deprecated in Octave version 6 and no further bug fixes will be made. Qt4 support will be removed completely in Octave version 7.
The legend function has been entirely rewritten. This fixes a
number of historical bugs, and also implements new properties such as
"AutoUpdate" and "NumColumns". The gnuplot toolkit—which is no
longer actively maintained—still uses the old legend function.
The axis function was updated which resolved 10 bugs affecting
axes to which "equal" had been applied.
Graphic primitives now accept a color property value of "none"
which is useful when a particular primitive needs to be hidden
(for example, the Y-axis of an axes object with "ycolor" = "none")
without hiding the entire primitive "visibility" = "off".
A new property "FontSmoothing" has been added to text and axes
objects that controls whether anti-aliasing is used during the
rendering of characters. The default is "on" which produces smooth,
more visually appealing text.
The figure property "windowscrollwheelfcn"is now implemented.
This makes it possible to provide a callback function to be executed
when users manipulate the mouse wheel on a given figure.
The figure properties "pointer", "pointershapecdata", and
"pointershapehotspot" are now implemented. This makes it possible
to change the shape of the cursor (pointer in Matlab-speak) displayed
in a plot window.
The figure property "paperpositionmode" now has the default "auto"
rather than "manual". This change is more intuitive and is
Matlab compatible.
The appearance of patterned lines "LineStyle" = ":"|"--"|"-." has
been improved for small widths ("LineWidth" less than 1.5 pixels)
which is a common scenario.
Printing to EPS files now uses a tight bounding box ("-tight"
argument to print) by default. This makes more sense for EPS
files which are normally embedded within other documents, and is
Matlab compatible. If necessary use the "-loose" option to
reproduce figures as they appeared in previous versions of Octave.
The following print devices are no longer officially supported: cdr, corel, aifm, ill, cgm, hpgl, mf and dxf. A warning will be thrown when using those devices, and the code for supporting those formats will eventually be removed from a future version of Octave.
The placement of text subscripts and superscripts has been re-engineered and now produces visually attractive results similar to Latex.
pkg describe now lists dependencies and inverse dependencies
(i.e., other installed packages that depend on the package in
question).
pkg test now tests all functions in a package.
When unloading a package, pkg now checks if any remaining loaded
packages depend on the one to be removed. If this is the case pkg
aborts with an explanatory error message. This behavior can be
overridden with the -nodeps option.
The function unique now returns column index vectors for the second
and third outputs. When duplicate values are present, the default
index to return is now the "first" occurrence. The previous Octave
behavior, or Matlab behavior from releases prior to R2012b, can be
obtained by using the "legacy" flag.
The function setdiff with the "rows" argument now returns Matlab
compatible results. The previous Octave behavior, or Matlab behavior
from releases prior to R2012b, can be obtained by using the "legacy"
flag.
The functions intersect, setxor, and union now accept a
"legacy" flag which changes the index values (second and third
outputs) as well as the orientation of all outputs to match Matlab
releases prior to R2012b.
The function streamtube is Matlab compatible and plots tubes along
streamlines which are scaled by the vector field divergence. The
Octave-only extension ostreamtube can be used to visualize the flow
expansion and contraction of the vector field due to the local
crossflow divergence.
The interpreter now supports handles to nested functions.
The graphics properties "LineWidth" and "MarkerSize" are now
measured in points, not pixels. Compared to previous versions
of Octave, some lines and markers will appear 4/3 larger.
The meta.class property “SuperClassList” has been renamed “Superclasslist” for Matlab compatibility. The original name will exist as an alias until Octave version 8.1.
Inline functions created by the function inline are now of type
“inline” when interrogated with the class function. In previous
versions of Octave, the class returned was “function_handle”. This
change is Matlab compatible. Inline functions are deprecated in
both Matlab and Octave and support may eventually be removed.
Anonymous functions can be used to replace all instances of inline
functions.
The function javaaddpath now prepends new directories to the
existing dynamic classpath by default. To append them instead, use
the new "-end" argument. Multiple directories may now be specified
in a cell array of strings.
An undocumented function gui_mainfcn has been added, for compatibility
with figures created with Matlab’s GUIDE.
Several validator functions of type mustBe* have been added. See
the list of new functions below.
The following functions and properties have been deprecated in Octave 6 and will be removed from Octave 8 (or whatever version is the second major release after 6):
Functions
| Function | Replacement |
|---|---|
runtests |
oruntests |
The environment variable used by mkoctfile for linker flags is now
LDFLAGS rather than LFLAGS. LFLAGS is deprecated, and a warning
is emitted if it is used, but it will continue to work.
The following functions and properties were deprecated in Octave 4.4 and have been removed from Octave 6.
Functions
| Function | Replacement |
|---|---|
chop |
sprintf for visual results |
desktop |
isguirunning |
tmpnam |
tempname |
toascii |
double |
java2mat |
__java2mat__ |
Properties
| Object | Property | Value |
|---|---|---|
annotation |
edgecolor ("rectangle") |
|
axes |
drawmode |
|
figure |
doublebuffer |
|
mincolormap |
||
wvisual |
||
wvisualmode |
||
xdisplay |
||
xvisual |
||
xvisualmode |
||
line |
interpreter |
|
patch |
interpreter |
|
surface |
interpreter |
|
text |
fontweight |
"demi" and "light" |
uibuttongroup |
fontweight |
"demi" and "light" |
uicontrol |
fontweight |
"demi" and "light" |
uipanel |
fontweight |
"demi" and "light" |
uitable |
fontweight |
"demi" and "light" |
auto_repeat_debug_commandcommandhistorycommandwindowfilebrowseris_same_filelightanglemustBeFinitemustBeGreaterThanmustBeGreaterThanOrEqualmustBeIntegermustBeLessThanmustBeLessThanOrEqualmustBeMembermustBeNegativemustBeNonemptymustBeNonNanmustBeNonnegativemustBeNonpositivemustBeNonsparsemustBeNonzeromustBeNumericmustBeNumericOrLogicalmustBePositivemustBeRealnamedargs2cellnewlineode23sostreamtuberescalerotxrotyrotzstream2stream3streamlinestreamtubeuisetfontverLessThanwebweboptionswebreadwebwriteworkspace