Ken & Mike on the MATLAB DesktopSeptember 21st, 2009The Front Page of the File Exchange: Your DesktopIt may seem backward in late 2009 that one of the great new features in MATLAB is integrating a web application, the MATLAB File Exchange, into the Desktop. However it’s not surprising to me that this arrangement works out quite well. Because the file exchange exists for sharing files created in and to be used in the MATLAB environment, this actually streamlines the workflow. This new tool solves the pain of making files from the exchange available and searchable right there without having to leave MATLAB. The File Exchange window is not open by default, so to bring it up, use the toolbar menu: Desktop -> File Exchange. Downloading is quite simple. Let’s say I wanted to download Ken’s breakpoint muting program:  3. Go  It’s pretty a simple feature, but the convenience factor is really there. You can search for toolbox functions using the Function Browser, and if we didn’t give you a particular function, you can then turn to the File Exchange and see if one of your friends on the web has already done the work for you. The file exchange is an active and friendly community and if you’ve come up with useful program, we encourage you to share that with the community through the File Exchange web interface. If your program is up to snuff, it may even be chosen as the File Exchange Pick of the Week. Resources:
September 14th, 2009MATLAB-Emacs integration is backI'd like to welcome guest blogger Eric Ludlam from the MATLAB Graphics team. Little ThingsBack in April of this year, Mike wrote a Desktop Blog article stating that it's the little things that count. In the comments to this article several people who were long time users of EmacsLink wrote in after discovering that the R2009a Editor interface stopped supporting EmacsLink. As an author of a lot of Emacs code, and the current maintainer of the matlab-emacs project on Source Forge, and the guy who helped bring the original Emacs Link into existence, I was both glad to know that so many folks had found it useful, and sad that they had never joined the matlab-emacs mailing list over on Source Forge, where the many questions could be easily answered. What is the matlab-emacs project?The matlab-emacs project is a MATLAB mode for Emacs that consists of Emacs Lisp code that implements a major-mode for Emacs that assists in the editing of MATLAB scripts. It also allows Emacs to be used in place of the MATLAB Editor for editing your MATLAB source code, debugging MATLAB code, and syntax/semantic checking of your MATLAB code with mlint. The MATLAB mode for Emacs does NOT include "EmacsLink", which was a tool that more tightly integrated MATLAB and Emacs for purposes of debugging M code. "EmacsLink" only included the communication interface between MATLAB and Emacs. The editing mode has always been a part of the matlab-emacs project. matlab-mode, which forms the root of the matlab-emacs project was first written by Matt Wette in 1991. Where to get matlab-emacs.The matlab-emacs project is hosted on SourceForge where the Emacs Lisp code can be downloaded from CVS. Detailed download and installation instructions are available here. Be sure to join the mailing list to get help on setting up and using the matlab-emacs project. Once you have downloaded the code using your preferred method, read the INSTALL file for full details. The matlab-emacs project has been expanded by it's users to include support for several features in CEDET. CEDET is an Emacs package that supplies an object system needed by the mlint support, and a complex completion/navigation package. Writing MATLAB code in EmacsWriting MATLAB code in Emacs is much like writing any other code in Emacs. The matlab-mode for Emacs has several features users have come to expect from Emacs, plus several features that make editing MATLAB code even better. What I'm sure many users think of as a single "EmacsLink", as it shipped with MATLAB, had two parts. One part was communication between MATLAB and Emacs for debugging. The other was the MATLAB script editing mode. Nothing has changed with the editing mode, except to make these tools even better, such as supporting the latest indentation styles, cell-mode, and programming constructs, such as the MATLAB Object System. As such, your editing experience in Emacs has only gotten better. Setting up matlab-mode for Emacs is pretty easy. Here is an example simple setup:  In this screenshot done with Emacs 23 on Linux, you can see some syntax highlighting, and mlint support for nested functions, and bold-face cross-function variables. The blue line over the nested function, and TAGS menu is part of the CEDET support that includes function browsing and completion. It also shows if/end block matching, and CEDET summary mode showing function details. Currenlty, the matlab-mode for Emacs supports these features:
How to use Emacs instead of the MATLAB EditorOK, now to answer many of the questions that have shown up in the comments to the Desktop blog. The most common question seemed to be "Why did you take EmacsLink away?", and Mike and Ken have done a fine job answering that. The real question should be "What should I do now?" Thankfully, I have two answers, and you can choose the one that best suites your development style. Using Emacs as an external editor.You can use Emacs as an external editor now in a way that is similar to what EmacsLink provided. One of the questions that showed up on the blog was was regarding using the preference panel to set Emacs as the default editor, and the complaint was:
The answer to these problems is to use an old Emacs tool called emacsclient. Emacslient lets you tell an already running Emacs to load a file in for editing. To enable emacsclient in your emacs, add this line to your ~/.emacs file:
(server-start)
From the unix command prompt, you can now call emacsclient like this:
emacsclient -n myfile.m
and myfile.m will be loaded into Emacs for editing. After researching this problem with the Ken and Mike, I have provided some simple tools for getting this setup. The matlab-emacs project now has a toolbox directory. If you were to install matlab-emacs in the directory ~/lisp/matlab-emacs, you can now place code like this in your startup.m file:
addpath('~/lisp/matlab-emacs/toolbox','-begin');
rehash;
emacsinit;
This will add the matlab-emacs project toolbox to your path, and the emacsinit script will configure MATLAB to tell an already running Emacs what to do when you type edit, or click on a link in the command window. 
This screenshot shows a hand-setup where the location of emacsclient is specified as an argument to emacsinit. This is important on Windows because it may not be on your path. Now, when stopped in the debugger, you can click on the blue line number to jump to that location in some file. The file being debugged is a rubik snake demo I wrote a few years back. This is a great step forward from just sticking the word "emacs" in the provided text field, but does not answer this question:
For this, you will need to use the Emacs command matlab-shell. Using matlab-shellThe Emacs command M-x matlab-shell RET, on unix, will start MATLAB as a subprocess under Emacs. The command prompt will be available in an Emacs buffer the same way the unix prompt shows up if you type M-x shell. If you use matlab-shell it will automatically configure your MATLAB as described in the previous section, allowing "edit" command to open files in a currently running Emacs. In addtion, Emacs will be able to send text from M files to the running MATLAB for execution. Once the matlab-shell has been started, you can select "Run Region" or "Run Cell" from the menu while editing .m files. This will send the text from your source file to matlab-shell for execution. If you just want to move the cursor to the shell, you can do M-x matlab-shell RET a second time to bring an already running shell forward.  In the above image, you can see the latest Aquamacs running matlab-shell. Selecting "Go to Last Error" or clicking the links moves the cursor to the typo that was introduced in my catapult modeling program. To debug, you can use the toolbar to set breakpoints, or use the the db commands. For example:
dbstop in ls
ls
dbstep
dbstep
dbquit
This will cause the ls.m file to popup in an Emacs buffer, with the debug arrow pointing at the correct line. Stepping through this file, or into new files will move the arrow to the correct place. For windows usersMATLAB does not support a tty command window on Windows so you cannot use matlab-shell. You will still be able to use emacsclient however. To do so, you will need to modify the setup configuration like this:
addpath('~/lisp/matlab-emacs/toolbox','-begin');
rehash;
emacsinit('c:/applications/Emacs/lib-src/emacsclient -n');
where you would replace the argument to emacsinit with the real path to your emacsclient binary on your system. The -n argument specifies that emacsclient should not wait for the user to finish editing the file. Windows configuration of emacsclient is also not as easy as it is on Unix. You may need to read up on configuring your Emacsclient to work propertly before starting with the matlab-emacs configuration. Make matlab-emacs betterThe matlab-emacs project has been around for a long time, and its many contributors have made it a powerful way to work with MATLAB. If you want to Emacs as you editor, join the matlab-emacs mailing list, and help make it better. Gratuitous ScreenshotThe below screenshot includes matlab-mode with CEDET support enabled, matlab-shell running, editing, and debugging sliceomatic with ECB, the Emacs Code browser all running together. 
Vim UsersFor the vim users who also posted comments, the techniques used here for Emacs will also work with vim. Modifying the two MATLAB script files to call to vim instead ought to make it easy to start using vim, or just about any other editor, with MATLAB. -by Eric Ludlam, The MathWorks 
September 7th, 2009New and Updated Desktop Features in MATLAB R2009bR2009b (version 7.9) is here! You’d think that I’d be used to the six month release cycle by now, but there is always something to do with mad rushes interspersed with calm lulls. We’re preparing blog posts about the new features in R2009b and doing retrospectives. At the same time we’re wrapping up the development of new features in R2010a and starting to plan what we’ll do for R2010b and R2011a. It’s a long road ahead for us, but we’re working hard to incorporate all the great suggestions and feedback you’ve left us on the blog. Some of the stuff we’ll highlight over the next few weeks are things you’ve been asking for, and we’re happy to take feedback for the next iteration. 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 or later, you can select Help -> Check for Updates. Be sure to let us know what you think of these new features!
September 4th, 2009R2009b is here!R2009b is here, and with it come a host of great new features in the MATLAB Desktop. Mike will be giving a full overview of the new Desktop features on Monday, but I wanted to call out one particular feature that just can’t wait until then: fully customizable keyboard shortcuts  I think this is one of our most requested features, at least on this blog. Let us know what you think!
August 31st, 2009Pouncing on Snow Leopard
 If you are a Mac user, you’re probably as excited about the recent release of OS X 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”) as we are. We’ve been testing MATLAB with developer seeds of Snow Leopard for some time and we’re happy that everyone will now get to use it. You can expect our formal system requirements to be updated in the next several days. We’re especially happy that Snow Leopard is being introduced at (almost) the same time as our R2009b release, which includes a shiny new native 64-bit version of MATLAB on the Mac. This will be a boon to anyone working with large data sets in MATLAB. On the user interface side, you can expect to see new features that Mac users will find especially agreeable – stay tuned to this blog over the next several weeks as we talk about the new UI features in R2009b. We also busily continue to remove the last vestiges of X11 from MATLAB. While it will take a couple more releases to completely expunge it, MATLAB is, for the most part, now free of its X11 heritage. For those migrating to Snow Leopard, you can expect to see the resolution of a couple of irritating UI quirks:
Finally, we also have a few small things to look out for if you’re adopting Snow Leopard. We are working with Apple on all of these issues:
We expect these issues to be resolved very soon in an Apple software update. We look forward to hearing about your MATLAB experiences on Snow Leopard. Will you be upgrading to Snow Leopard in the near future? Do you plan on adopting 64-bit MATLAB?
August 24th, 2009MATLAB webinarsA while back I pointed out how you could watch demos of various things within MATLAB, which serves mainly as a tool to learn about new features. The MathWorks also offers webinars on our website, all of which are free and tend to be much more detailed instructional style resources. You’ll find a catalog of past webinars here, and a listing of the upcoming webinars here.  The webinars span the breadth of MATLAB products, as well as the various levels of MATLAB users. Here are a few webinars you might find interesting: Large Data Sets in MATLAB Webinars are a great way to receive classroom style instruction, without needing to leave your computer. Have you watched any of the webinars?
August 17th, 2009Calling Java from MATLAB, Memory IssuesFollowing up with my previous post about using Java objects in MATLAB, this week I’m going to discuss the memory issues that can crop up. When a Java object is created in the MATLAB workspace, it is actually created in the Java heap space and not the main memory used by MATLAB. On a 32-bit windows machine, MATLAB might have up to 3 GB available for creating matrices and other MATLAB objects but only 64 or 128 MB (by default) for creating java objects. To find out how much memory is available for creating Java objects, there are three numbers of importance: the free memory, the total memory, and the max memory. The free memory is the number of bytes available in the heap space for creating new objects. The total memory is the number of bytes allocated to the total heap space which is the size of the objects created + the free memory. When the amount of free memory starts to get low, java will increase the total memory until it equals the the max memory. You can see this in the following animated graph, where the green (total memory) is bumped up when I create the large array of java doubles. The jumps in the blue represent the objects created as I manipulated the editor and command window to set up this demo, and the dips are when those objects get garbage collected, freeing up memory. The actual double array isn’t shown on this graph as it is created and cleared faster than the sampling time of the graph. 
This is the demo that was running at the time of the jump: you can see the commands to discover the java memory, as well as the fact that the array creation ups the used java memory but does not affect the memory for MATLAB array creation: free = java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime.freeMemory total = java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime.totalMemory max = java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime.maxMemory feature(‘memstats’) x = javaArray(‘java.lang.Double’,400000); for i=1:400000 x(i)=java.lang.Double(i); end
free =
13271784
total =
65470464
max =
130875392
Physical Memory (RAM):
In Use: 1911 MB (77755000)
Free: 1655 MB (677f0000)
Total: 3567 MB (def45000)
Page File (Swap space):
In Use: 2205 MB (89dd3000)
Free: 3243 MB (cab14000)
Total: 5448 MB (1548e7000)
Virtual Memory (Address Space):
In Use: 585 MB (24928000)
Free: 1462 MB (5b6b8000)
Total: 2047 MB (7ffe0000)
Largest Contiguous Free Blocks:
1. [at 320b5000] 459 MB (1cb9b000)
2. [at 4edf6000] 279 MB (117da000)
3. [at 21810000] 263 MB (107f0000)
4. [at 605d9000] 146 MB ( 9217000)
5. [at 6d346000] 71 MB ( 470a000)
6. [at 697f6000] 58 MB ( 3a3a000)
7. [at 71ce7000] 19 MB ( 1319000)
8. [at 73026000] 18 MB ( 126a000)
9. [at 7e4a1000] 18 MB ( 124f000)
10. [at 7d1d7000] 18 MB ( 1239000)
======= ==========
1352 MB (548cb000)
ans =
481931264
free = java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime.freeMemory
total = java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime.totalMemory
max = java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime.maxMemory
feature(‘memstats’)
free =
31137576
total =
102739968
max =
130875392
Physical Memory (RAM):
In Use: 1919 MB (77f2a000)
Free: 1648 MB (6701b000)
Total: 3567 MB (def45000)
Page File (Swap space):
In Use: 2238 MB (8be27000)
Free: 3210 MB (c8ac0000)
Total: 5448 MB (1548e7000)
Virtual Memory (Address Space):
In Use: 584 MB (248b8000)
Free: 1463 MB (5b728000)
Total: 2047 MB (7ffe0000)
Largest Contiguous Free Blocks:
1. [at 320b5000] 459 MB (1cb9b000)
2. [at 4edf6000] 279 MB (117da000)
3. [at 21810000] 263 MB (107f0000)
4. [at 605d9000] 146 MB ( 9217000)
5. [at 6d346000] 71 MB ( 470a000)
6. [at 697f6000] 58 MB ( 3a3a000)
7. [at 71ce7000] 19 MB ( 1319000)
8. [at 73026000] 18 MB ( 126a000)
9. [at 7e4a1000] 18 MB ( 124f000)
10. [at 7d1d7000] 18 MB ( 1239000)
======= ==========
1352 MB (548cb000)
ans =
481931264
One caution is that this space is shared between any objects you might create as well as objects created by the Desktop, Editor, Current Folder, etc. Once all the java memory is used up, there is the potential of locking up MATLAB, as there might not be enough room to even create an out-of-memory dialog. There is a solution to running out of Java memory that is usually safe, although sometimes produces unintended consequences if the numbers are made too large. That is to create or modify a java.opts file in the MATLAB startup directory. This allows you to pass JVM options (such as the total and max memory for the heap) on MATLAB startup. Instructions can be found at this solution.
August 10th, 2009Tab to narrow completionsTab completion is a great time saver for me, and helps me find a function when I can’t quite remember the exact name. There’s a little known feature that makes tab completion even more useful, though, and it happens to be off by default. When you press tab in the Editor or Command Window, if there are functions that start with what you’ve typed, you’ll be shown a popup with a list of all the those functions. If you press tab again, then the selected item is inserted at the caret. But what if the popup is showing, and you want to filter down the list of things by typing more text? You can do that if you turn on the following preference: Preferences -> Keyboard -> Tab key narrows completions (in the Tab Completion section) When you press “p” at the command prompt, and then press tab, you’ll see a list of all the functions that start with “p”. So far, nothing is different. 
What do you think? Should this feature be on by default?
August 3rd, 2009More dialogs than you can shake a stick atI’m going to continue my dialog discussion from two weeks ago with more of the MATLAB dialog gallery. I feel a bit like a car salesman, we’ve got so many dialogs to choose from. I’ve grouped them into two categories: dialogs for messages, and dialogs for setting/getting things. The first group is the msgbox and it’s specialized variants: warndlg, errordlg, and helpdlg. Msgbox is a basic dialog that presents a message to the user with an “OK” button. The warning, error, and help dialogs are all special cases of msgbox with the icon pre-chosen:
errordlg
 warndlg  helpdlg 
The second group provides common dialogs that are either system, Java, or Handle Graphics based, depending on the dialog and platform. These are dialogs for dealing with files, printing, and picking fonts and colors. File Picker(s) Here’s what they look like on Windows and MAC  
Setting Fonts and Colors  
I didn’t cover printdlg and printpreview which are dialogs for printing MATLAB figure windows. I recommend checking them out on your own. There’s also a progressbar waitbar: 
If all these predefined UI’s aren’t enough for you, check out the MATLAB file exchange. Last week’s pick of the week was STRUCTDLG, a dialog for editing the fields of a struct. This week they’ll highlight another submission in the same vein.
July 27th, 2009Here’s what your Desktops look likeAs promised (though admittedly a couple weeks late), here are the pictures of your Desktops. Only two screen shots were sent in and a couple text-only descriptions — not quite the level of participation I was hoping for. I guess I should have offered up chocolate peanut butter instead of MATLAB t-shirts! Brett Shoelson, using 7.8 (R009a) 
 
Thanks to all those who sumbited their Desktop configurations!
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