There’s actually a bug in Java that’s preventing us from using the Mac screen menus. This is reportedly fixed in Apples version of Java 6 - so if that proves to be true, I’ll be sure to make the fix!

-Ken

It is not currently possible, but I will create an enhancement request with your comments.

Thanks.

Thanks for clarifying the purpose of the publishing capability. I certainly had not picked up on that important distinction and it is not emphasized in the “Overview of Publishing M-Files.” In fact, the overview emphasizes the formats that you can publish to, e.g., the how and not the why.

Reading between the lines, I would guess that technical text book writing is the capability that The MathWorks wanted to support when they wrote the specification for this feature.

After reviewing some of the examples from the Google search, it doesn’t look like a capability that fits well with my needs.

The new Publish Configurations make publishing files easier and more convenient, but don’t really change the way publishing works or the output that it generates.

Publishing does deliver something that no print out of code ever could: inline output. That is, publishing will insert the output of your M files into the published document. Thus showing you code and what it generated, be that plain text or rich figures.

I’ll be sure to pick good examples that showcase the power of publishing when I blog on Publish Configurations.

-Ken

I write my functions to take advantage of the help functionname syntax and I don’t find it a burden to generate a % for each line since the MatLab editor automates it.

Also, I haven’t found it useful to use the block comment feature. Again, because it is so easy in the MatLab editor to generate many comment lines.

Even though I keep trying to use the code folding feature, I find that it promotes excessively long and complex functions. As a consequence, the only use I’ve adopted is the cell functionality where it turns into only a navigation bookmark.

Finally, I’ve also tried to use the publish features of MatLab. Although I can get output, it doesn’t seem to measure up to its billing in that the published output doesn’t really help another user understand the code any more than well commented code. If you do a future column on publishing, be sure to focus on how having these extra configuration control features improves the published result when compared to just printing well commented code on a color printer.

Regarding recognizing multiple lines of consecutive comments as a block: Good point - we’ll look at this for a future release. Note that a function’s comment section (the first contiguous comment lines in the file and also returned by help functionname), are treated as a block.

Regarding inserting %{ and %} when a Ctrl-R is issued: the problem here would be that these comment tokens need to be on their own lines (as you point out below). I think that might be to much of an unexpected consequence - maybe not…what do you think?

As far as block comments…their intended to deal with the nuanced behavior of MATLAB continuations (…) and so deal in the realm of lines only. They are very analogous to doing something like this in C:

#if 0
stuff to ignore
#endif

Great feedback Dan!
-Ken