| Late-Breaking News for the MATLAB 5.2 Product Family | Search Help Desk |
www.mathworks.com to access the Technical Support Solution Engine.
Details about the supported platforms and system requirements for MATLAB 5.2 are available online via the Technical Support FAQs. You can access this information via the MATLAB 5 FAQ link from the The MathWorks home page (www.mathworks.com) or via the Help Desk (in The MathWorks Web Site section, via the Questions link).
Same Approach As for MATLAB 5.1
The installation process for MATLAB 5.2 is almost the same as for MATLAB 5.1. There is now an option to install a Japanese version of the documentation. Refer to the appropriate MATLAB 5.1 Installation Guide for installation instructions.Obtaining Your Personal License Password (PLP) or License File
To install this software, you need a Personal License Password (PLP) for PC or Macintosh standalone licenses, or a License File for PC network and UNIX licenses. The MathWorks automatically sends the PLP or License File via e-mail or fax to the registered end user and the system administrator listed for the license. Without the PLP or License File, your software cannot be installed. If you do not have your PLP or License File, then you can do one of the following:www.mathworks.com
You can request your MATLAB Access number under the MATLAB Access Program area at www.mathworks.com or send e-mail to access@mathworks.com
serivce@mathworks.com
Ensuring Sufficient Space for FTP Installation
The MATLAB installation is performed from the area indicated by the Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows NT environment variableTEMP.
If you run out of space while installing MATLAB via FTP, reset the TEMP environment variable to an area with sufficient space. Note that for FTP installations you need approximately 180 MB of space. The entire set of The MathWorks products is downloaded to the area specified by the TEMP environment variable; the installation process then installs only the products you specify.
Running MATLAB as a Networked Application
The networked version of MATLAB uses the TCP/IP communications protocol. Please note that although MATLAB is designed to run on any network that supports TCP/IP, only the Microsoft network has been fully qualified and is therefore the only officially supported network.Run AXDIST.exe for Network Installations
If you are performing a network installation, runaxdist.exe from the AXDIST directory on the CD-ROM for the current version of the OLE aut32.dll.
For single-user installations you do not need to run axdist.exe.
Windows NT 3.51 No Longer Supported
To run MATLAB 5.2 and its associated products on a Microsoft Windows NT platform, you must have Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 (i.e., Windows NT 3.51 is no longer supported).Modifying the lmboot Parameter
The table on pages 1-14 to 1-15 of the December 1996 edition of the MATLAB Installation Guide for UNIX, Version 5.0 includes instructions to "Fix username argument to lmboot_TMW5 in this file." This means, for example, if your user name isSmith, the line in the Bourne shell fragment would read as follows:
/etc/lmboot_TMW5 -u Smith && echo ' MATLAB_lmgrd'
Note that the May 1997 reprint of the MATLAB Installation Guide for UNIX was updated to include the above information.
Default Web Browser Is Netscape Navigator
The MATLAB Help Desk requires an appropriate Web browser (but not Internet access). The default browser is Netscape Navigator, as found on the UNIX path. For directions on how to change this default, at the MATLAB command line enterhelp docoptThe GUI for the Macintosh installation has been modified for MATLAB 5.2. The interface now uses check boxes, similar to the PC installation interface. The installation process itself, however, is the same as it was for MATLAB 5.1.
MATLAB 5.2 Documentation
The MathWorks Help Desk provides access to online help topics, online reference materials, electronic documentation, and World Wide Web pages through a Web browser. You do not need to be connected to the Internet to access the online documentation. Windows and Macintosh users can access this facility via the Help menu or the ? icon on the Command Window toolbar. Users on all platforms can access the Help Desk with thehelpdesk command.
To run the Help Desk, you should use Netscape Navigator Release 3.0 or 4.0.4 (earlier releases of Netscape Navigator Version 4 do not work well with the Help Desk), or with Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or 4.0.
Specify Web Browser in docopt.m File for UNIX
The MATLAB Help Desk requires an appropriate Web browser (but not Internet access). On UNIX platforms, you must specify the browser you want to use in thedocopt.m file; that file includes detailed directions.
The 5.2 Help Desk includes a full-text search facility for the HTML online documentation. You can access the full-text search facility from the top page of the Help Desk or from the "Search" link on reference pages.
The 5.2 HTML reference pages provide additional navigational aids. The "Examples" and "See Also" links at the top of the first reference page for a function allow you to jump directly to the examples or to links to associated functions.
Also at the top of the reference pages is a "Go to function" edit box. Enter the name of the function and press the Enter key to see the reference page for that function.
The doc command now accesses the HTML reference documentation for all MathWorks products for which HTML reference documentation has been installed. Before Version 5.2, the doc command only accessed the documentation for MATLAB functions.
The MATLAB documentation set has been expanded and in some cases rewritten. The set consists of online help, as well as hypertext-based manuals.
If you are upgrading to MATLAB 5.2 from an earlier version of MATLAB, then you should read MATLAB 5.2 Product Family New Features. The New Features document describes the enhancements added with MATLAB 5.0 through MATLAB 5.2. That document provides a roadmap for which sections you need to read, based on the version of MATLAB from which you are upgrading.
If you are a new MATLAB user, you should start by reading Getting Started with MATLAB, which explains how to MATLAB fundamentals.
The following manuals have been printed and distributed to existing customers of MATLAB and its optional associated products, as part of their update package:
Manuals Updated Online for 5.2
All the updated manuals listed above are also available online, via the Help Desk, in PDF format. The Late-Breaking News for the MATLAB 5.2 Product Family and the reference sections of the documentation for most of these toolboxes and blocksets are also available in HTML form. In addition, the following manuals have been updated for 5.2 in PDF form. The reference section of almost all these manuals is available in HTML format, too.gsvd, for generalized singular value decomposition. The gsvd function is documented in the online MATLAB Function Reference, but was not highlighted in MATLAB 5.2 Product Family New Features.
PC and UNIX Usage Information
See "PC-Specific Problems" for information about known MATLAB software problems on PC platforms.Printing Under Microsoft Windows
Before you can print from a Microsoft or Novell NetWare network environment under Windows 95 or NT, you must map the LPT1 port to the printer you want to use. To map LPT1 on Microsoft networks, issue this command at the system's command prompt:net use LPT1: \\server\printerwhere
server is the name of the server sharing the printer and printer is the name of the printer.
On Novell NetWare networks, use this command:
capture l=1 q=printerwhere
printer is the name of the print queue.
If you are using a Microsoft network, you can map LPT1, or you can edit the printopt function to change the definition of pcmd to:
COPY /B %s \\server\printer:where
server is the name of the server sharing the printer and printer is the name of the printer.
Problems Printing Using Z-Buffer
A fatal error occurred while running 'xsetup' the X Window System version of 'install'. The following error was returned by this program:
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter
attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 42 (X_SetInputFocus)
Serial number of failed request: 12029
Current serial number in output stream: 12030
You may safely ignore these messages.
Tar: blocksize = 16
You may safely ignore this message.
Editor Options Stored in Registry File
The MATLAB Editor stores your options in a registry file located under the directory$HOME/.windu. Communication with this file is handled through a daemon (called windu_registryd41 or windu_registryd40), which is started automatically when you start MATLAB, and is shut down shortly after you quit MATLAB.
You can view the registry by typing the command regedit at the MATLAB command line. The regedit command starts the registry editor. Your settings are located under HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/MathWorks.
This registry is not portable across different UNIX platforms. The registry can only be read and written to on the platform on which it was created. If you start the MATLAB Editor on a different platform, it will start a registry daemon with the default options. These options can be saved and retrieved from the registry daemon, but once the daemon is shut down, the options will be lost.
When you start the Editor, if you get messages about missing options, it is possible that your registry has somehow been corrupted. To fix this problem, kill your registry daemon and delete the registry database directory. Then restart MATLAB and it will create a new registry with the default options.
Help Desk Search on DEC Alpha Running Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator 3.0 does not correctly implement Java on the DEC Alpha platform. Therefore, the search utility of the MATLAB Help Desk does not run on DEC Alpha under the Netscape browser. You can use the MATLABlookfor function to help search for command line help by topic.
Adobe Acrobat Reader Not Supported for Xoftware
The Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is required to access the PDF files available through the Help Desk, is not supported for Xoftware.Compatibility Issues
The following minor compatibility issues are not included in the MATLAB 5.2 Product Family New Features document.Use of P-Code Between MATLAB Versions
You cannot use Version 5.2 P-code in a pre-5.2 P-code application. You can use pre-5.2 P-code in a Version 5.2 P-code application. If you want to distribute an application to users who might be running a different version of MATLAB than the one in which you are writing the application, you should use M-files instead of P-code.Colon Expressions with Floating-Point Numbers
Values produced in colon (:) expressions may vary between MATLAB 5.2 and pre-5.0 versions of MATLAB, if you are doing an exact comparison of floating-point numbers. For floating-point numbers, you should use tolerance-based comparisons (eps), not exact comparisons. (Use exact comparisons only for integers.)
Warning When Using == with an Empty Matrix
The expression A == [] produces 0 or 1 (as it did in MATLAB 4), and MATLAB issues the following warning message when this expression is used:
Warning: X == [] is technically incorrect. Use isempty(X) instead.
[], for this expression.
Invoking the Path Editor from the Command Line
To invoke the MATLAB path editor from the command line on Microsoft Windows 95 or NT, UNIX, or Macintosh platforms, issue thepathtool command. In previous releases on various platforms the pathedit and editpath commands also invoked the path editor, but the command that works on all platforms for Version 5.2 is pathtool.
Frame Uicontrols and Stacking Order
Frames are opaque, not transparent, so the order you define Uicontrols is important in determining whether Uicontrols within a frame are covered by the frame or are visible. Stacking order determines the order objects are drawn: objects defined first are drawn first; objects defined later are drawn over existing objects. If you use frames to enclose objects, you must define the frames before you define the objects. Before MATLAB 5.2, frames were always drawn below other Uicontrols on Microsoft Windows applications regardless of the order they were created. If you use MATLAB on UNIX or Macintosh computers, this change does not affect you. If, however, you use MATLAB on Microsoft Windows, stacking order affects any applications that define frames after they define objects contained within the frames. To ensure that frames are drawn below other objects, either:position vectors are defined by pbpos, cbpos, and fpos to simplify the code):
hpush = uicontrol('Style','pushbutton','Position',pbpos);
hcheck = uicontrol('Style','checkbox','Position',cbpos);
hframe = uicontrol('Style','frame','Position',fpos);
% change stacking order to put frame on bottom
% gcf is the current figure
stackvec(1)=hpush; stackvec(2)=hcheck; stackvec(3)=hframe;
set(gcf,'Children',stackvec)
system_dependent command to force frames to be drawn below other objects. The form of this command is:
system_dependent('ForceFramesOnBottom','on')
Note that the ForceFramesOnBottom string is case sensitive. Issue the command before running the application. When you issue the command, MATLAB issues a warning indicating that frames will be inserted below other objects. To suppress the warning message for just this command, include these statements in your M-file or your startup.m file:
warning off
system_dependent('ForceFramesOnBottom','on')
warning on
You should use these commands only until you have had a chance to correct the M-files. The first two solutions are preferable to this solution; this solution is provided to ease the transition for users who were not aware that the Microsoft Windows behavior was inconsistent with stacking order rules that applied to all other Handle Graphics® objects.
You can turn off this behavior using this statement:
system_dependent('ForceFramesOnBottom','off')
In MATLAB 5.2, the clc command produces the same result as using the Edit menu item Clear Sessions. Thus, after you issue clc, you can no longer scroll back to see the previous contents of the Command Window (as you could in earlier versions of MATLAB).
However, you can use the up arrow to see the history of the commands, one at a time.
In MATLAB 5.2, if you cd from one drive to another for your working directory, the cd command does not retain any subdirectory part of the path if you cd back to the initial drive.
For example, if you first issue a cd command such as
cd C:\MyAppsand then issue
cd D:\MyMatlabDir cd C: pwdyou will see
C:\In earlier versions of MATLAB, if you issued the same commands as shown above, you saw
C:\MyApps
Known Software Problems or Limitations
This section describes MATLAB 5.2 known software problems, providing workarounds for most problems.Opening Multiple Arrays in the Array Editor
If you select more than one array in the Workspace Browser and click OK to open them, the Workspace Browser (and possibly other GUI tools) will crash. To avoid this problem, open arrays one at a time. Note that there are some additional graphics issues discussed in the section "PC-Specific Problems" and "UNIX-Specific Problems".Tooltips Do Not Work on Windows 95 with comctl32.dll Version 4.00.950
The tooltip feature introduced in MATLAB 5.2 does not work with a certain configuration of Microsoft Windows 95 because of a bug in that operating system. In particular, tooltips do not work on computers having version 4.00.950 ofcomctl32.dll. To determine which version of comctl32.dll you have, run the Windows Explorer. In the Win95 directory, display the files in the System directory. Right-click on comctl32.dll and select Properties. Then, select the Version tab to see the version number.
Internet Explorer version 3 upgrades comctl32.dll to version 4.70; Internet Explorer version 4 upgrades the file to version 4.71. Tooltips work with either version. Also, more recent versions of Windows 95 correct this problem. You can access the complete self-extracting archive file Com32upd.exe at
http://support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/Com32upd.exe
Note that even though your computer may have an upgraded version of comctl32.dll, if you are writing an application to be used by other users, they will not be able to take advantage of tooltips if their computers have the older version of the file.
GUIs that have a very large number of Uicontrols may take a long time to print when you use the print -dwin command.
Additionally, if you open another application on top of the GUI window while printing is in progress, elements of the top window may appear in the printout.
A warning is produced. To avoid this, wait until MATLAB indicates printing is finished before opening another window on top of your GUI.
The HPGL -dhpgl print driver does not perform clipping in MATLAB 5.2. As a result, the text labeling port names in Simulink blocks can extent beyond the rectangle enclosing the block. Also, zooming in on line plots can produce lines that are not clipped to the Axes box, (i.e., it looks as if the Line objects Clipping properties are set to off).
Note that Microsoft Word users who import HPGL illustrations into documents will see no difference (since Word does not honor clipping).
The dragrect function assumes that rectangles passed to it are specified in pixel units, not current Figure units. To avoid incorrect scaling of the rectangle(s) when using dragrect, make sure that arguments are specified in pixel units.
In function rbbox(initialRect,fixedPoint,stepSize), the stepSize argument is in pixel units. Arguments initialRect and fixedPoint are in the current Figure units.
MinorGridLine Style Property Not Supported
The AxesMinorGridLineStyle property, which is mentioned in Chapter 10 of the MATLAB 5.0 Using MATLAB Graphics manual and returned when you query Axes properties, is not currently fully supported.
Avoid Modifying Input Arguments in MEX-Files
In MATLAB 5.1, MATLAB arrays can share data. There is currently no way for a MEX-file to determine that an array contains shared data. MEX-files that modify their input arguments may corrupt arrays in the MATLAB workspace. This style of programming is strongly discouraged.Fortran Interface Not Implemented for New API Routines
The Fortran interface for API routines introduced in Version 5.0 is not implemented. The Fortran interface is only for routines in MATLAB 4. Engine support is now implemented on PC platforms using ActiveX. Only V4 data types are currently supported.Compiling with the Watcom 11.x Compiler
On the PC, when compiling MEX-files with Watcom 11.x, it is necessary to add thewatcom\binnt directory to your DOS path.
Powerstation Fortran No Longer Supported
Powerstation Fortran 4.0 is no longer supported for MEX-files. DEC Visual Fortran 5.0 is supported. The following problems apply to Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT platforms running MATLAB, unless otherwise indicated. If you try to access (e.g., via the helpdesk command or the Simulink Help button) the HTML online documentation via the Netscape Navigator browser and the documentation does not appear, open the browser manually and then access the online documentation. In general MATLAB will automatically start the browser for you, but in some Netscape Navigator installation configurations that will not occur.Launching the M-File Editor/Debugger Without MATLAB
When you launch the M-File Editor/Debugger without MATLAB open, it becomes a pure editor; you cannot use it as a debugger. To be able to use both the editing and debugging capabilities, have MATLAB open when you launch the M-File Editor/Debugger from Microsoft Windows, or start the M-File Editor/Debugger from within MATLAB.Cannot Set Breakpoint in an M-File Shadowed by a P-File
When a P-code file, sayfoo.p, has been generated for an M-file, foo.m, via the pcode command, you can no longer debug the foo function graphically. If you set a breakpoint from the Editor/Debugger, the breakpoint icon will appear, but execution won't stop at the breakpoint when you run foo. If you set a breakpoint from the command line, the breakpoint icon won't appear but execution will stop at the breakpoint.
To work around this limitation, use either
dbstatus
Avoid Spaces in Directory Names and Filenames
To ensure predictable results when running MATLAB on the PC, avoid using spaces in directory names and filenames for the locations you use for installing MATLAB and its ancillary products such as the compilers used for building MEX-files. Following this recommendation shields you from a limitation in the Windows 95 and Windows NT command environment. If you do use spaces in such directory names or filenames, you may encounter problems stemming from the Windows command environment, such as messages about being unable to find files that are actually where you think they are.Cutting and Pasting from X Window Systems Applications
You cannot use the Editor on UNIX platforms to cut and paste to and from X Window Systems applications.Editor Does Not Support Japanese Characters
The Editor on UNIX platforms does not accept Japanese characters as input.