Mike on the MATLAB DesktopSeptember 5th, 2011R2011b Is Here!It’s (almost) fall, and that means a brand-new release of MATLAB. Here are a few awesome new Desktop features in this release:
12 Responses to “R2011b Is Here!”Leave a Reply |
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Interesting and useful improvements, thank you Mathworks
Still no built in 64Bit compiler.
What a shame…
Just downloaded and installed 2011b 64bit on my Windows 7 PC and I cannot get the rename variable feature to work. Is there a setting in the preferences that I need to change?
Not sure what I did, but it is working now.
Hi Mike,
Yes, I really do appreciate all the new fancy features in every release. But… please, please, please, please, please (yes, I’m on my knees, hands clasped, begging you with my eyes wet), could you finally introduce
* regexp find/replace, and
* find/replace within a selection
in the Matlab Editor?
The two things are bread and butter in every programmer’s life. And life’s very miserable without them. Every little freeware editor out there have them. Since about mid 1990s. It’s simply beyond my comprehension why on earth Matlab remains the only one in the world without them.
Cheers,
Jaromir
The new spreadsheet import tool is great. Is it as fully featured on Mac/Linux as it is in Windows?
Cheers,
Mike
@Jaromir,
Good suggestion. It’s been one of those features that’s been hard to schedule.
It’s a bit clunky but if you wanted to implement a regexp find via a button, you can put the following in a dekstop Shortcut:
excell = inputdlg('find');ex = excell{1};ed = matlab.desktop.editor.getActive; [s,e] = regexp(ed.Text,ex,'once'); [sl, sc] = matlab.desktop.editor.indexToPositionInLine(ed, s); [el, ec] = matlab.desktop.editor.indexToPositionInLine(ed, e); ed.Selection = [sl sc el ec];We can also do something for find within Selection.
@Mike,
The tool itself is the same on all platforms, but we are limited in the types of spreadsheets that can be imported on machines that are not Windows with Excel installed. See: this doc page for more information.
Hm, the doc page doesn’t really talk about other platforms at all — it refers to Windows only versions of Excel.
This is an example where Mathworks could benefit from better platform integration. Excel on Mac can be controlled very well using Applescript, the platform-standard. And yet, Matlab is incapable of sharing data ala Excel link on Windows, and I suspect the spreadsheet tool could benefit too…
Here is a big +1 for regexp search / replace.
And really, these smallish desktop tweaks are all very nice, but many of us users *really* want the 500kg Desktop Gorillas to finally be dealt with. Handle graphics is an antiquated mess (and cross-platform nightmare), and what the hell has happened to GUIDE for the last few years!?!?!?
We keep hearing rumours of HG2, but are still waiting. I really would rather lose some of the UI twiddles in the plot manager etc. for plots which don’t look pixelated with circles that are aliased, which can’t even be copied on anything except windows and which only support transparency in some parts with specific renderers.
The only good news I see is that Yair Alman seems to have uncovered some amazing new UI functionality here (bottom of the article): http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/matlab-installation-woes/ — though he has been documented HG2 for years and we still never see it in a release so…
Hi, I have some problems with the new import wizard.. I have a csv file that I previously managed to import without problems in r2011a. In 2011a it interprets my dates as numbers, and I am unable to avoid it..
Example:
time,value1,value2
03/03/2010 09:06:37.933,a,5
03/03/2010 11:34:14.998,b,8
04/03/2010 16:03:22.208,a,6
In 2011a I got the time and value1 information in ‘textdata’, while the numeric data was contained in ‘data’. Looks like matlab 2011b interprets the time as a number, how can I avoid it?
@Ian,
If the development process was as easy as having the Editor developers work on HG2 and GUIDE, then they would be, but those projects require different teams and skills. We will continue to make incremental improvements to all areas of the products while working on larger projects behind the scenes. As you’ve seen from clever “software archaeologists” we are making progress each release and trying new things that may or may not ever be exposed. We’ll announce those projects when and if they are ready. I know it’s frustrating, but we really are approaching this with the goal of providing the best user experience.
@John,
I am not sure about that, try posting on MATLAB Answers or submit a support request. That date might have been converted to a numeric date. Try the DATESTR function to get the string back.
Thanks for your response Mike! If it wasn’t for the fact the HG and Guide were *so* long in the tooth, “getting-it-right” would be great, but I really would prefer having some of that new core functionality (the time I waste working round HG and guide…) than none, “release-early-release-often”!
Cheers, Ian