| Desktop Tools and Development Environment, MATLAB® Version 7.5 (R2007b) Release Notes | |
New features and changes introduced in this version are organized by these topics:
You can now change the MATLAB® startup directory on Microsoft® Windows® platforms using the standard shortcut Start in field. The My Documents\MATLAB subfolder (or Documents\MATLAB on the Microsoft Windows Vista™ platform) is the default startup directory. Upon startup, MATLAB automatically creates a My Documents\MATLAB subfolder (or Documents\MATLAB on the Windows Vista platform) if it does not exist, and adds it to the top of the MATLAB search path. To change the startup directory:
Right-click the MATLAB shortcut icon and select Properties from the context menu. The MATLAB Properties dialog box opens to the Shortcut pane.
In the Start in field, specify the directory in which you want MATLAB to start, for example, C:\My MATLAB Place.
You can specify the directory via a UNC path (that is, the path can begin with \\).
The Target field specifies the full path to the file to start MATLAB, matlab.exe, located in the bin folder (for example, C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2007b\bin\matlab.exe). Use the bin\matlab.exe to start MATLAB instead of matlab.bat or matlab.exe located in a platform directory such as bin\win32. The bin\matlab.exe detects the Windows platform and ensures required run-time files are installed.
Compatibility Considerations. The Target field no longer contains the -sd $documents startup option. In MATLAB Version 7.4 (R2007a), the startup directory was specified via the -sd startup option in the Target field. You had to specify the directory via a mapped drive. Any value in the Start in field was ignored.
The file to start MATLAB, as specified in the Target field, was matlab.bat.
Change any scripts you use to start MATLAB to specify the full path to bin\matlab.exe. If you use matlab.bat in R2007b, MATLAB issues a warning message instructing you to use matlab.exe instead.
If scripts include the -sd startup option to specify the startup directory, that will be the startup directory, even if a directory is specified in the Start in field.
New features and changes introduced in Version 7.5 (R2007b) are:
Minimizing Tools in the Desktop Now Supported on Macintosh® Platforms
Double-Click to Maximize or Restore Minimized Tools in Desktop
Start Button Now Includes New Category for Links and Targets
Antialiasing Option No Longer Necessary on Windows® and Macintosh® Platforms
You can now minimize tools in the desktop on Apple® Macintosh® platforms. It was introduced for other platforms in a previous version.
After you minimize a tool within the desktop, you can now:
Restore the tool to its former position by double-clicking the button.
Drag a button to move its position—drag it to another edge of the desktop or to a new position within the edge where it's currently located.
Restore the tool by dragging the button to a location within the desktop, or outside the desktop to undock the tool.
Similarly, you can double-click a tool's title bar to maximize the tool in the desktop; then double-click the title bar again to restore it to its former position. (The capability was introduced in R2007a, MATLAB Version 7.4).
For more information, see Opening and Arranging Tools and Minimized Tools in Desktop Example.
Select Desktop > Desktop Layout > All but Command Minimized to arrange the desktop as shown here. The Command Window is open in the desktop, and all other desktop tools are open, but minimized.
In the Start button, there is a new category for Link and Target products. Select Start > Links and Targets, and then select one of the products. In previous versions, you accessed these products from the Toolboxes or Simulink® software categories.
You also use this new category when running demos, or accessing Demos or Contents in the Help browser. For more information, see Demos and Help Browser Contents Now Include New Category for Links and Targets.
To add your own toolboxes to the Start button, select Start > Desktop Tools > View Start Button Configuration Files. In previous versions, this menu item was View Source Files. There has been no change in functionality or features.
Some icons on toolbar buttons have changed slightly. In addition, standard desktop icon image files are no longer provided in the matlabroot/toolbox/matlab/icons directory.
Compatibility Considerations. If your code relied on icon files in the matlabroot/toolbox/matlab/icons directory (for example, for adding your entries to the Start button or the Help browser), you might need to use other image files.
MATLAB now follows the operating system's font settings on Microsoft and Macintosh platforms. This provides smooth fonts without the need for antialiasing within MATLAB.
New features and changes introduced in Version 7.5 (R2007b) are:
When you type letters in the Command History, it finds and selects the next entry that begins with the letters you typed. Now, if the entry is in a session that was collapsed, MATLAB automatically expands the session and selects the matching entry in it. In previous versions, MATLAB did not find matching entries in collapsed sessions.
If you do not want to find entries in collapsed sessions (the previous behavior), you can instead select Edit > Find, which finds text in the Command History, but not in collapsed sessions. For more information, see Finding Next Entry By Letter.
For more information, see Help on Selection Enhanced in Command Window and Editor.
New features and changes introduced in Version 7.5 (R2007b) are:
To open the Help browser from a tool's Help menu, select Product Help. In previous versions you selected Full Product Family Help.
When the Help browser first opens, it displays help for MATLAB. In previous versions, it displayed a Begin Here page. The information previously available on the Begin Here page has been incorporated into the MATLAB roadmap page.
When you close and reopen the Help browser, it maintains the list of pages you previously viewed, but does not open to the page you last viewed. In previous versions, upon reopening, the Help browser displayed the page you last viewed.
When you run the demo function or access Demos or Contents in the Help browser, there is a new category for Link and Target products.
To use the demo function to access a demo that is now in the Links and Targets category, you specify the new subtopic 'links and targets', followed by the category. For example
demo('links and targets', 'link for modelsim')displays the Demos pane, and expands the Link for ModelSim® demos listing.
In the Help Demos, Link and Target products
appear together in their own category, and are identifiable by the
new Links and Targets icon,
.
In the Help Contents, Link and Target products
appear together after any installed Simulink and blockset products,
and are identifiable by the new Links and Targets green book icon,
.
This new category is also used in the Start button in the MATLAB desktop—for more information, see Start Button Now Includes New Category for Links and Targets.
If you add help or demos to the Help browser for your own toolbox or list your own toolbox in the Start button and you want to take advantage of the new Links and Targets category, use the new type, links_targets, in the info.xml file for your toolbox.
Compatibility Considerations. In previous versions, when you used the demo function to access a demo that is now in the Links and Targets category, you specified a different subtopic and category. If you have any code that relies on the demo function for accessing Links and Targets demos, you will need to replace the subtopic and category in the code.
In previous versions, you accessed the products in the Help browser Demos from the Toolbox or Simulink software categories.
In previous versions, you accessed the products in the Help browser Contents from within the list of toolbox products (orange book icon) or Simulink products (blue book icon).
To get help for a function in the Command Window or the Editor, click the pointer in the function name and press F1. The reference page for that function appears in a small, temporary (pop-up) window. To close the window, press Escape. You can also access the feature by choosing Help on Selection from the context menu. For details, see Getting Help on Selection for Functions.
Compatibility Considerations. In the previous version, you could select the function name, right-click, and select Help on Selection. The documentation appeared in the Help browser. Now if you want to see the documentation for the function in the Help browser, first access the pop-up help, and then click the Open Help Browser link.
New features and changes introduced in Version 7.5 (R2007b) are:
In the Editor/Debugger, you can provide values for a function's input arguments using a configuration, and then run that configuration to use the assigned values. Use a configuration as an alternative to running the function in the Command Window. You can associate multiple configurations with an M-file, each for different input values. MATLAB saves the configurations between sessions.
To create a configuration, first open an M-file in the Editor/Debugger.
Then, from the down arrow on the Run button in the toolbar
select Edit
Configurations for filename. In the resulting Edit M-File Configurations dialog box, add statements
and name the configuration. For more information, see Using Run Configurations to Run M-Files with Input Arguments
in the Editor.
The Run/Continue button has a new look and new location on the Editor/Debugger toolbar.
Compatibility Considerations. The button performs the same as it did in previous versions, but you need to access it in the new position.
To improve the readability of files containing several subfunctions, the Editor includes a code folding feature, which is enabled by default. Using this feature you can collapse and expand subfunctions and their associated help. The following figure shows the collatzplot_new function collapsed, such that only the function definition is displayed. The figure shows the collatz function expanded, revealing both the help code and the function code. If you collapse just the help code, only the H1 help line displays.
To expand code that is collapsed, click the plus sign (+) to the left of the code you want to expand.
To collapse code that is expanded, click the minus sign (-) to the left of the code you want to collapse.
To expand or collapse all of the code in an M-file, place your cursor anywhere within the M-file, right-click, and then select Code Folding > Expand All or Code Folding > Collapse All from the context menu.
For more information, see Code Folding—Expanding and Collapsing M-File Constructs
For more information, see Help on Selection Enhanced in Command Window and Editor.
In previous versions, text files provided with MATLAB for Windows platforms included a carriage return and line feed at the end of each line. Starting in R2007b, the text files MATLAB provides do not include a carriage return and line feed at the end of each line.
File types affected are:
.asc
.bat
.c
.cc
.cdr
.cpp
.def
.for
gs.rights
.h
.ini
.m
.mdl
.pl
readme
.tlc
.tmf
.txt
There is no impact if you view the files in MATLAB and other common text editors, with the known exception of the Microsoft Notepad application.
Compatibility Considerations.
If you use the Notepad application to view files provided with MATLAB,
you see carriage return and line feed symbols
instead of line endings.
This makes the files less readable in the Notepad application. Other
text editors might display the symbols instead of line endings, but
of the common text editors tested, none have been found that do so.
As an alternative to the Notepad application, use the Microsoft WordPad application, provided with Windows platforms, or another text editor to view the files.
If your Windows file associations are set to associate any of the listed file types with Notepad, change the associations to use WordPad or another text editor.
The following illustration shows how the ver M-file included with MATLAB Version 7.5 looks when opened in the Notepad application.
The following illustration shows how the ver M-file included with MATLAB Version 7.5 looks when opened in the WordPad application.
There are no problems with files you create or edit in the Notepad application, and then view or edit in MATLAB. The files have line endings in the MATLAB Editor, and continue to have line endings when you open them in the Notepad application.
(Microsoft product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation.)
The MATLAB stand-alone Editor (meditor.exe) will no longer be provided, starting in the next version of MATLAB. Instead of the stand-alone Editor, you can use the MATLAB Editor/Debugger. It provides all the features of the stand-alone Editor, plus the following:
Tab completion
Debugging M-files
Evaluating selections
Accessing source control features
Docking the tool in the MATLAB desktop
Using cell features for rapid code iteration or publishing
Compatibility Considerations. Some users have preferred the stand-alone Editor to the MATLAB Editor/Debugger because of slightly better startup performance and because it does not require a MATLAB license. For those situations, you can use any text editor you have, such as the UltraEdit® application from IDM Computer Solutions, or the GNU® Emacs software.
The cyc option to the mlint function enables you to determine the McCabe complexity (also referred to as the cyclomatic complexity) of an M-file. Higher McCabe complexity values indicate higher complexity, and there is some evidence to suggest that programs with higher complexity values are more likely to contain errors. Frequently, you can lower the complexity of a function by dividing it into smaller, simpler functions. In general, smaller complexity values indicate programs that are easier to understand and modify. Some people advocate splitting up programs that have a complexity rating over 10. See mlint for syntax and an example.
New features and changes introduced in Version 7.5 (R2007b) are:
Notebook now supports Microsoft Word for Office 2007. For details, see Using Notebook to Publish to Microsoft® Word .
The following Editor/Debugger menu items are added to assist you in marking up cells in the Editor/Debugger for publishing. Access the menu items presented in the following list from Cell > Insert Text Markup . When you select the menu item, the Editor inserts code to assist you in adding the text markup for the specified item.
Document Title and Introduction
Section Title with Cell Break
Hyperlinked Text
Image
Numbered List
HTML Markup
LaTeX Markup
The first two list items are provided instead of the Cell Title and Descriptive Text menu items that were offered in Version 7.4 (R2007a).
As an alternative to using the Cell menu items, you can manually insert code to mark up cells in your M-file for publishing. For details on the Cell menu items and the resulting code see Marking Up Text in Cells for Publishing
You can now specify options to restrict the number of lines included in the output of a published M-file. To access this option from the Editor/Debugger, follow these steps:
Select File > Preferences > Editor/Debugger > Publishing
In the Editor/Debugger Publishing Preferences pane, select the Evaluate code and Restrict output to options.
Specify the maximum number of lines that you want to include in the output.
| Version 7.5 (R2007b) MATLAB® Software | Mathematics, MATLAB® Version 7.5 (R2007b) | |
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