Ken & Mike on the MATLAB Desktop

March 9th, 2009

R2009a (version 7.8) is here! These releases sure do come quickly. You’ll find the full release notes here. You can also find a video of the new Desktop features here. Below, I’ve called out some of my favorite new and updated Desktop features.

To get this latest release go here, or if you’re using R2008b, you can select Help -> Check for Updates.

Be sure to let us know what you think of these new features!

Extended M-Lint

Extended M-Lint messages give you more insight into an M-Lint warning or error, including why the problem is occurring and what action you can take to resolve the issue.

M-Lint Preferences

The M-Lint preferences panel has been updated to include icons indicating a warning or error and a search field, which will allow you to quickly find a message. You can also view the extended version of the message (if it has extended information) by clicking on its link.

Publishing Figure Capture Methods

There are two new figure capture methods: entireGUIWindow and entireFigureWindow. These options will give you better control over what portions of the window you capture in your published output.

By Ken Orr

Ken is a developer on the MATLAB Desktop team. He loves the art of graphic design as well as developing visually pleasing user interfaces - he's one of those 'crazy' Mac guys!

11:43 UTC | Posted in Uncategorized | Permalink |

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11 Responses to “New and Updated Desktop Features in R2009a”

1. Daniel replied on March 11th, 2009 at 16:35 UTC :
   

   Amen to “Publishing Figure Capture Methods!”

2. Mike replied on March 11th, 2009 at 17:04 UTC :
   

   Thanks Daniel. I hope it will make writing your blog easier.

3. Jody Klymak replied on March 16th, 2009 at 14:39 UTC :
   

   As a potential feature request…

   I was mentioning over at Loren’s blog that it would be nice if there were some way to reopen a specific set of files in the editor. That would allow one to easily switch between “Projects” in the editor. i.e. something like “Save Editor State” and Load Editor State. Perhaps this already exists and I don’t know about it.

4. Ken replied on March 16th, 2009 at 15:43 UTC :
   

   Hi Jody,

   Your request is a good one. In fact, your not the first to ask for this feature (see comments here and here).

   Thanks for the feedback.

   -Ken

5. Jody Klymak replied on March 24th, 2009 at 17:35 UTC :
   

   On Loren’s blog, Daniel had a suggested implementation of this using Java….

6. Mike replied on March 24th, 2009 at 18:19 UTC :
   

   Jody,

   That bit of code will stop working in a future release of MATLAB.

7. Daniel Armyr replied on September 8th, 2009 at 07:26 UTC :
   

   Publish to PDF has been a long-time request of mine. I am looking forward to finally getting rid of the clunky HTML with a whole tail of image files tagging along.

   As for the file exchange, if you did it right, I think it will be one of the great features. If not, it will quickly end up on the rather large pile of “ideas that were good as such, but ultimately weren’t helpful”.

   –DA

8. Rudolph de Jager replied on September 9th, 2009 at 13:36 UTC :
   

   I’ve seen some people mentioning a requirement of having 2 desktop windows. Main purpose is to work on 2 screens and have some windows docked into the one container (desktop window) and others on the other screen.

   All responses were that it is not possible. Could it become possible?

9. fayez Gebali replied on September 9th, 2009 at 17:40 UTC :
   

   New release 2009b to me is frustrating compared to 2008. I have no emacs interface anymore in command window or editor. Even tab completions are not allowed.

   Now my MAC machine using matlab looks like a PC using windows. I wish I did not delete my R2008.

   Now I open an outside emacs editor for matlab files but I am stuck with the command window.

10. Ken replied on September 9th, 2009 at 17:44 UTC :
    

    fayez,

    We’ll be talking about Emacs integration next week — stay tuned. What do you mean by “tab completions are not allowed”?

    I’m not sure what you mean by “Now my Mac machine using MATLAB looks like a PC using Windows” — the look of MATLAB hasn’t changed *that* much between R2008a/b and R2009b, and it certainly doesn’t look any more like Windows than it did.

    -Ken

11. Yair Altman replied on September 9th, 2009 at 19:12 UTC :
    

    Rudolph - You can indeed dock windows into separate docking groups (containers), including new user-defined groups. You can then move any of your containers to the secondary screen.

    See my setFigDocGroup utility on the Matlab File Exchange: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/16650

    Note that this relies on undocumented and unsupported Matlab features which may possibly fail in some Matlab releases.

    Yair

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