| Version 2.5 (R2007a) Mapping Toolbox™ Software Release Notes | |
This table summarizes what's new in Version 2.5 (R2007a):
New Features and Changes | Version Compatibility Considerations | Fixed Bugs and Known Problems | Related Documentation at Web Site |
|---|---|---|---|
Yes | Yes — Details labelled as Compatibility Considerations in descriptions of new features and changes, below. See also Summary. | Bug reports at Web site | Printable Release Notes: PDF Current product documentation |
New features and changes introduced in this version are
This release includes a faster los2 function (which computes intervisibility between locations on or above a terrain grid). The viewshed function (which computes the portions of a terrain grid that can be seen from a given viewpoint) has also been accelerated as a result.
Two functions that reckon position and distance along a meridian on the ellipsoid are now available:
meridianarc — Computes distance along a meridian between two latitudes
meridianfwd — Reckons position along meridian given a starting point and distance
In prior releases, when you typed certain Mapping Toolbox™ function names with no argument list, a specialized GUI appeared that enabled you to interactively set parameters related to the function. This feature was seldom used and sometimes raised errors when users attempted to operate the GUIs. Starting in this release, a GUI will no longer appear when you issue the following commands:
comet3m
cometm
contourfm
contour3m
contourm
demcmap
fill3m
fillm
lightm
limitm
linem
meshlsrm
meshm
patchesm
patchm
pcolorm
plot3m
plotm
quiver3m
quiverm
scatterm
stem3m
surfacem
surflm
surfm
surflsrm
symbolm
textm
Use the above functions with arguments to avoid raising errors. Their GUIs will continue to be available via maptool (which places menus on a figure containing map axes), but they are not being actively supported and will be eliminated in a future release.
Four new functions have been added to convert to and from decimal degrees and degrees-minutes-seconds (DMS):
dms2degrees — Convert degrees-minutes-seconds to degrees
dm2degrees — Convert degrees-minutes to degrees
degrees2dms — Convert degrees to degrees-minutes-seconds
degrees2dm — Convert degrees to degrees-minutes
The DMS inputs and outputs of these functions are vectors of one row and three columns for each row in the decimal degrees input or output. The first column contains the "degrees" element and is integer-valued. The second column contains the "minutes" element and is integer-valued. The third column contains the "seconds" element, and may have a nonzero fractional part. Similarly, DM inputs and outputs are two-column vectors with integer degrees and fractional minutes parts.
The new conversion functions dispense with the DMS encoding used in prior versions of the toolbox. These represented DMS angles by a single real number, the format of which is dddmm.ss. Such an encoding is no longer used internally by Mapping Toolbox functions, as it is not self-documenting and can lead to erroneous computations. For example, two DMS-encoded real numbers cannot be added to obtain a meaningful result.
DM and DMS representations are widely used in published reports and can occur in geodata that you want to read into the MATLAB® workspace. You can still import and export DM and DMS data, but Mapping Toolbox functions no longer accepts the old encodings as alternatives to floating point representations of latitude and longitude for internal manipulations.
The scalar DM and DMS encodings are being eliminated from the toolbox because they were never used for internal computations, and always had the potential to generate serious numerical errors if passed accidently to functions that expected normal latitude-longitude tuples. They also made the functions that accepted them less efficient due to the need to convert from DM or DMS to fractional latitudes and longitudes before processing the input data.
The following existing functions (which all use scalar DMS encoding) are being retired. They remain available but now issue warnings that they are obsolete when used:
deg2dm — Instead use degrees2dm to convert degrees to degrees-minutes vector
deg2dms — Instead use degrees2dms to convert degrees to degrees-minutes-seconds vector
dms2deg — Instead use dms2degrees to convert degrees-minutes-seconds vector to degrees
dms2mat — Instead use degrees2dms to convert degrees to degrees-minutes-seconds vector
dms2rad — Instead use dms2degrees to convert degrees-minutes-seconds vector to degrees and call deg2rad or multiply by pi/180
mat2dms — Instead use dms2degrees to convert degrees-minutes-seconds vector to degrees
rad2dm — Instead, call rad2deg or multiply input arguments by 180/pi, and then call degrees2dm
rad2dms — Instead, call rad2deg or multiply input arguments by 180/pi, and then call degrees2dms
In addition, the axesm and setm functions no longer accept the strings 'dms' and 'dm' for setting either the AngleUnits or LabelUnits properties of a map axes.
Many other Mapping Toolbox functions optionally accept angle strings for their units parameter; the following 57 functions now only accept 'degrees' and 'radians', whereas in prior versions they would also accept 'dm' and 'dms' as values for units:
These functions now issue warnings when provided 'dm' or 'dms' for their units argument.
The following functions to convert between time units and encodings will be removed from a future release of the toolbox:
hms2hr
hms2hm
hms2mat
hms2sec
hr2hm
hr2hms
hr2sec
mat2hms
sec2hm
sec2hms
sec2hr
time2str
timedim
These functions remain available, but when they are invoked now issue warnings that they are obsolete.
| Version 2.6 (R2007b) Mapping Toolbox™ Software | Version 2.4 (R2006b) Mapping Toolbox™ Software | |
| © 1984-2008- The MathWorks, Inc. - Site Help - Patents - Trademarks - Privacy Policy - Preventing Piracy - RSS |