April 30, 2018
News for version 9 8 7 6 5 4.4 4.2 4 3.8 3.6 3.4 3.2 3 2 1 (Release History)
** A graphical Variable Editor has been added to the GUI interface.
It uses a spreadsheet-like interface for quick, intuitive editing
of variables. The Variable Editor is launched by double-clicking
on a variable name in the Workspace Window or by typing
"openvar VARIABLE_NAME" in the Command Window.
** On systems with 64-bit pointers, --enable-64 is now the default and
Octave always uses 64-bit indexing. However, if the configure
script determines that the BLAS library uses 32-bit integers, then
operations using the following libraries are limited to arrays with
dimensions that are smaller than 2^31 elements:
BLAS LAPACK QRUPDATE SuiteSparse ARPACK
Additionally, the following libraries use "int" internally, so
maximum problem sizes are always limited:
glpk Qhull
** The octave command no longer starts the GUI by default. Most users
starting Octave from a shell were expecting the command line
interface, and desktop launchers already required the `--force-gui'
option. With this change, desktop launchers should be modified to
use the new option `--gui'. The previous `--force-gui' option will
continue to work, and maps to `--gui', but it will be removed in
Octave 6.
** A known bug in Qt (https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-55357) is
addressed by limiting GUI sub-panel relocation capabilities for Qt
versions in the range >= 5.6.1 and < 5.7.1. However, this may not
thoroughly avoid issues on all platforms.
** A new container data type--containers.Map--is available. Map is a
key/value storage container (a.k.a, a hash) that efficiently allows
storing and retrieving values by name, rather than by position which
is how arrays work.
** The bareword "import" is now recognized in scripts and functions.
However, the functionality to import functions and classes from
other namespaces into the local scope has not yet been implemented.
Attempting to use "import" will provoke an error message.
** hex2num and num2hex now work for integer and char types and num2hex
may optionally return a cell array of strings instead of a character
array. If given a cell array of strings, hex2num now returns a
numeric array of the same size as the input cell array. Previously,
hex2num would accept a cell array of strings of arbitrary dimension
but would always return a column vector.
** New special functions cosint, sinint, and gammaincinv have been added.
** Special functions in Octave have been rewritten for larger input
domains, better accuracy, and additional options.
* gammainc now accepts negative real values for X.
* improved accuracy for gammainc, betainc, betaincinv, expint.
* gammainc has new options "scaledlower" and "scaledupper".
* betainc, betaincinv have new option "upper".
** The "names" option used in regular expressions now returns a struct
array, rather than a struct with a cell array for each field. This
change was made for Matlab compatibility.
** The quadcc function now uses both absolute tolerance and relative
tolerance to determine the stopping criteria for an integration.
To be compatible with other quadXXX functions, such as quadgk, the
calling syntax has changed to
quadcc (f, a, b, [AbsTol, [RelTol]])
To update existing code, change instances of RelTol to [0, RelTol].
quadcc (f, a, b, tol) => quadcc (f, a, b, [0, tol])
A warning that a single tolerance input is now interpreted as an
absolute tolerance will be issued in Octave versions 4.4 and 5,
after which it will be removed. The warning has ID
"Octave:quadcc:RelTol-conversion" and can be disabled with
warning ("off", "Octave:quadcc:RelTol-conversion")
** The qr function now returns a standard factorization unless
explicitly instructed to perform an economy factorization by using a
final argument of 0.
** The Qt graphics toolkit now supports offscreen printing without osmesa
if Octave was built with Qt >= 5.1.
** The built-in pager for display of large data is now disabled by
default. To re-enable it for every Octave session add the following
to your .octaverc file:
more on;
** The FLTK toolkit is no longer prioritized for development. The
number of Octave Maintainers is too small to support three different
graphic toolkits. New development will target the Qt toolkit.
While no longer prioritized, the FLTK toolkit is not deprecated and
there is no schedule for its removal.
** The graphic object property "PickableParts" has been implemented
which controls whether an object can accept mouse clicks.
** The graphic object property "Interruptible" has been fully
implemented which controls whether a running callback function can
be interrupted by another callback function.
** The graphic object property "HitTest" has been updated to be fully
compatible with Matlab.
** Text objects now implement the properties "BackgroundColor",
"EdgeColor", "LineStyle", "LineWidth", and "Margin".
** An initial implementation of alpha transparency has been made for
patch and surface objects. Printing to svg and pdf is supported.
** ishandle now returns true for both graphics handle objects and
Java objects. The latter change was made for Matlab compatibility.
Use ishghandle or isgraphics if it is important not to include Java
objects.
** The "Octave:undefined-return-values" warning ID is obsolete. Octave
now throws an error for any attempts to assign undefined values that
might be returned from functions.
** The header file oct-alloc.h has been removed along with the macros
that it defined (DECLARE_OCTAVE_ALLOCATOR, DEFINE_OCTAVE_ALLOCATOR,
and DEFINE_OCTAVE_ALLOCATOR2).
** The pkg command now accepts a URL as an argument, allowing a valid
Octave package to be installed from any remote host with one command,
for example
pkg install https://example.org/download/example-package.tar.gz
** The following statistical functions have been moved from core
Octave to the statistics package available from Octave Forge.
BASE
cloglog
logit
prctile
probit
qqplot
table (renamed to crosstab)
DISTRIBUTIONS
betacdf
betainv
betapdf
betarnd
binocdf
binoinv
binopdf
binornd
cauchy_cdf
cauchy_inv
cauchy_pdf
cauchy_rnd
chi2cdf
chi2inv
chi2pdf
chi2rnd
expcdf
expinv
exppdf
exprnd
fcdf
finv
fpdf
frnd
gamcdf
gaminv
gampdf
gamrnd
geocdf
geoinv
geopdf
geornd
hygecdf
hygeinv
hygepdf
hygernd
kolmogorov_smirnov_cdf
laplace_cdf
laplace_inv
laplace_pdf
laplace_rnd
logistic_cdf
logistic_inv
logistic_pdf
logistic_rnd
logncdf
logninv
lognpdf
lognrnd
nbincdf
nbininv
nbinpdf
nbinrnd
normcdf
norminv
normpdf
normrnd
poisscdf
poissinv
poisspdf
poissrnd
stdnormal_cdf
stdnormal_inv
stdnormal_pdf
stdnormal_rnd
tcdf
tinv
tpdf
trnd
unidcdf
unidinv
unidpdf
unidrnd
unifcdf
unifinv
unifpdf
unifrnd
wblcdf
wblinv
wblpdf
wblrnd
wienrnd
MODELS
logistic_regression
TESTS
anova
bartlett_test
chisquare_test_homogeneity
chisquare_test_independence
cor_test
f_test_regression
hotelling_test
hotelling_test_2
kolmogorov_smirnov_test
kolmogorov_smirnov_test_2
kruskal_wallis_test
manova
mcnemar_test
prop_test_2
run_test
sign_test
t_test
t_test_2
t_test_regression
u_test
var_test
welch_test
wilcoxon_test
z_test
z_test_2
** The following image functions have been moved from core Octave to
the image package available from Octave Forge.
ntsc2rgb
rgb2ntsc
The following functions and properties have been deprecated in Octave 4.4 and will be removed from Octave 6 (or whatever version is the second major release after 4.4):
Functions
| Function | Replacement |
|---|---|
chop |
sprintf for visual results |
desktop |
isguirunning |
tmpnam |
tempname |
toascii |
double |
java2mat |
__java2mat__ |
Graphics properties
| Object | Property | Value |
|---|---|---|
| figure | doublebuffer | |
| mincolormap | ||
| wvisual | ||
| wvisualmode | ||
| xdisplay | ||
| xvisual | ||
| xvisualmode | ||
| axes | drawmode | |
| annotation | edgecolor (“rectangle”) | |
| text | fontweight | “demi” and “light” |
| uicontrol | fontweight | “demi” and “light” |
| uipanel | fontweight | “demi” and “light” |
| uibuttongroup | fontweight | “demi” and “light” |
The rectangle and ellipse annotation property "edgecolor" has been
deprecated and will be removed from Octave 6 (or whatever version
is the second major release after 4.4). Use the property "color"
instead.
The following functions were deprecated in Octave 4.0 and have been removed from Octave 4.4.
allow_noninteger_range_as_indexbicubicdelaunay3do_braindead_shortcircuit_evaluationdump_prefsfind_dir_in_pathfinitefmodfnmatchgmap40loadaudioluincmouse_wheel_zoomnfieldsoctave_tmp_file_nameplayaudiosaveaudiosetaudiosylusageboundscamlookatcamorbitcamposcamrollcamtargetcamupcamvacamzoomcorrcoefcosintdecicerasegammaincinvgetframegrootgsvdhgtransformhumpsintegralintegral2integral3isgraphicsisstringmadode15iode15sopenvarquad2drepelemrgb2grayrtickssininttfqmrthetaticksvecnormwinqueryregxticklabelsxticksyticklabelsytickszticklabelszticks