News archive

New release of Octave Forge Notable changes in this release include:

• image: removel of imread and imwrite as they have been moved to core Octave. New functions: entropyfilt, ordfiltn, rangefilt, stdfilt
• control: include functions previously shipped with core Octave.
• finance: include functions previously shipped with core Octave.
• general: include a parallel version of cellfun: parcellfun.
• nnet: new functions: dividerand, ind2vec, mapstd, vec2ind.
• nan: support complex data.
• new packages: nurbs, oct2mat, bugfix, simp, quaternion.
• general bug fixes and improvements all over the place.

Release of Octave Forge tested against Octave 3.0.2. Many packages will also function function with earlier versions of Octave 2.9. Notable changes in this release include:

• data-smoothing: rewritten regularization smoothing functions.
• ga: many improvements.
• odepkg: solvers now also work in backward direction.
• benchmark: new package for benchmarking Octave and compatible tools.
• nlwing2: new package for Nonlinear Lifting Line for Wings.
• general bug fixes and improvements.

Release of Octave Forge tested against Octave 3.0.1. Many packages will also function function with earlier versions of Octave 2.9. Notable changes in this release include:

• ann: New package for Octave bindings to the ANN library for nearest neighbor calculation.
• database: New package to allow postgres, mysql, sqlite, and standard ODBC database commands from within Octave.
• video: New package with bindings to ffmpeg to add handling of video files from within Octave.
• bioinfo: New package for Bioinformatics manipulation.
• data-smoothing: New package with algorithms for smoothing noisy data.
• ga: New package with basic genetic algorithm optimization functions.
• missing-functions: New package to identify functions that are missing from Octave relative to the latest verson of Matlab.
• ftp: New package to ftp from within Octave
• ocs: A new package for circuit simulation.
• fixed: Build fix for Unix, cygwin and mingw platforms.
• plot: Remove old plot code based on Xlib and replace with gtext, ginput and waitforbuttonpress functions that use gnuplot directly to obtain the required information. Add colstyle function.
• signal: Add the window and buffer functions. Fix tukeywin for odd lengths.
• mapping: Add the km2deg and reckon functions.
• image: Add the imcomplement and rgbplot functions. Support for bilateral filtering. Build fixes for new versions of ImageMagick.
• miscellaneous: Add the hex2num and num2hex functions.
• odepkg: Added ddaskr based solver.
• splines: Add the catmullrom interpolation function.
• financial: Add the rsindex function.
• time: Add the thirdwednesday function.
• general: Add the saveprod function.
• general bug fixes and improvements.

Release of Octave Forge tested against Octave 3.0. Many packages will also function with earlier versions of Octave 2.9. Notable changes in this release include:

• jhandles: More graphics properties.
• ad: New package for Automatic Forward Differentiation.
• OctGPR: New package for interpolating and smoothing scattered multidimensional data using Gaussian Process Regression (also known as Kriging).
• financial: New package.
• odepkg: Improvements in speed and compatibility.
• image: New functions: 'imfilter', and 'imsmooth'.
• comm: New functions: 'genqamdemod', 'deintrlv', 'randintrlv', 'randdeintrlv', 'matdeintrlv', and 'matintrlv'.
• signal: New functions: 'bitrevorder'.
• statistics: New functions: 'random'.
• audio: Added audio speaker output support for MacOS X.
• general bug fixes and improvements.

Release of Octave Forge tested against Octave 2.9.18. Many packages will also function function with earlier versions of Octave 2.9. Notable changes in this release include:

• jhandles: Addition of PS and TeX text support. Better integration with core Octave plotting functions.
• plot: Removal of many functions ported to 2.9.18. Additional of ellipsoid function.
• odepkg: First version of an IDE problem solver in form of an oct-file implemention.
• audio: Avoid 64bit issues in sound.m.
• MinGW: Build support for MinGW.
• general bug fixes and improvements.

Release of Octave Forge tested against Octave 2.9.15. Many packages will also function function with earlier versions of Octave 2.9. Notable changes in this release include:

• jhandles: Significant improvement in the GUI functions and graphics handles compatibility, including stemseries, barseries, GUI callbacks, postscript output, etc.
• java: Allow for waitfor functions in Octave. Use dlopen/dlsym rather than symbolic linking to the JVM in linux and OS X platforms.
• signal: New functions welchwin, blackmannutall, shanwavf, mexihat meyeraux and morlet. Bug fix in specgram for window with an odd number of elements.
• info-theory: New functions condentr_seq, hartley_entropy, infoentr_seq, infogain_seq, kullback_leibler_distance, mutualinfo_seq, narysource, renyi_entropy and shannon_entropy.
• comm: New function ammod, amdemod, fmmod, fmdemod, systematize, reedmullergen, reedmullerenc, reedmullerdec, egolaydec, egolayenc and egolaygen.
• geometry: Remove the geometry package that is migrate dto the Octave core.
• polynomial: Remove polyint function, migrated to the Octave core.
• statistics: Aligned function names and arguments for matlab compatibility, removing the function pascal_stat and weibstat and replacing them with nbinstat and wblstat.
• arpack: Bug fix to allow non convergence to be correctly flagged.
• general bug fixes and improvements.

Release of Octave Forge tested against Octave 2.9.13. Many packages will also function function with earlier versions of Octave 2.9. Notable changes in this release include:

• jhandles: New java based plotting and gui package based on JOGL.
• bim: New package for solving Diffusion Advection Reaction (DAR) Partial Differential Equations based on the Finite Volume Scharfetter-Gummel (FVSG) method.
• msh: New package for triangular and tetrahedral meshing based on GMSH
• fpl: New packages containing a collection of routines to plot data on unstructured triangular and tetrahedral meshes based on OpenDX.
• triangular: New package for an example of how to add user types for Octave.
• odebvp: New package for boundary value ODE problems.
• econometrics: Calculate kernel weights in an oct-file for performance.
• java: Java package can now build correctly under Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Allow callback functions
• statistics: Fix histfit as normal_pdf now takes the variance and not the deviation.
• signal: Add axes to specgram. New functions barthannwin, blackmanharris, bohmanwin, diric, gauspuls, gmonopuls, nuttallwin and sawtooth.
• comm: new functions qfunc and qfuncinv.
• time: new function daysact.m.
• Improvements in the SRPM, RPM, MSVC and Mac OS X build systems.
• Remove functions ported to Octave 2.9.13.
• general bug fixes and improvements.

Release of Octave Forge tested against Octave 2.9.12. Many packages will also function function with earlier versions of Octave 2.9. Notable changes in this release include:

• secs1d: A new package for 1D semiconductor drift diffusion modeling.
• secs2d: A new package for 2D semiconductor drift diffusion modeling.
• outliers: New package for outlier detection.
• sockets: New package for posix sockets layer.
• comm: New functions lz77enco and lz77deco.
• signal: New function tukeywin.
• tsa: New functions selmo2.
• pt_BR: Update portuguese function translations for pre Octave 2.9.11
• general bug fixes and improvements.

Octave Forge reorganized as a series of packages for use with the Octave package manager. See the packages for more details. Apart from the changes associated with the conversion to use the package manager, the following additional changes are notable:

• nnet: A new neural network toolbox
• odepkg: A new matlab compatible package for ODE that replaces the existing extra/ode package
• info-theory: A new package of information theory functions
• zenity: A new package for creating simple graphical user interfaces.
• xraylib: A new package for bindings to the gnu xray library.
• optiminterp: A new package for optimal interpolation.
• java: A new package for java interface
• arpack: A new package with bindings to ARPACK for the eigs and svds functions
• physical_constants: A new package with elemental physical constants based on NIST data
• pt_BR: A new package with Portuguese language translations
• linear-algebra: New function bicg
• spline: Allow NDArrays in csape and make it compatible
• comm: New functions fibodeco, fibodeco, fiboenco, fibosplitstream, golombdeco, golombenco, huffmandeco, huffmandict, huffmandict, huffmanenco, ricedeco, riceenco, rledeco, rleenco, shannonfanodeco, shannonfanodict and shannonfanoenco
• econometrics: New functions __kernel_epanechnikov, __kernel_normal, kernel_density, kernel_density_cvscore, kernel_density_nodes, kernel_example, kernel_optimal_bandwidth, kernel_regression, kernel_regression_cvscore and kernel_regression_nodes
• specfun: New functions dirac, erfcinv, erfcx, expint_E1, expint_Ei, expint, heaviside, psi, Si, sinint and zeta
• statistics: New functions betastat, binostat, chi2stat, expstat, fstat, gamfit, gamlike, gamstat, geostat, hygestat, juscdf, juspdf, lognstat, normstat, pascal_stat, poisstat, tstat, unidstat, unifstatand and weibstat,
• polynomial: New function polyint
• miscellaneous: New functions zagzig, zigzag and reduce
• image: New functions apply, deriche, fspecial, bwarea, __bwarea, bwperim, graythresh, impersepectivewap, label2rgb im2double, im2uint8, im2uint16 and imremap. __magick_read__ Fix for non 8bit. Quantum sizes in imagemagick. Compatiability changes to imwrite, isgray and rgb2gray. imread, probe depth from bits rather than Red field, allows loading of gray scale images. The function map modified to treat function handles. Convert all functions to use texinfo help.
• signal: New function ar_psd, arburg, cohere, cpsd, csd, mscohere, pburg, pwelch, pyulear, tfe, tfestimate, replacing existing functions with many more features and much better compatibility. New functions upsample, downsample, rectwin, dst and idst
• strings: New functions cstrcmp, base64decode
• plot: New function hist2d
• geometry: New function inpolygon
• general: New function issorted
• optim: New function fminsearch
• combinatorics: new function combs
• Windows: New functions for Windows COM bindings
• MSVC: Changes in build system to support Microsoft VC compiler
• general bug fixes and improvements

Octave Forge version 200607008 released. This version was the last monolithic release and the first release that only supported version of Octave later than Octave 2.9.

An abbreviated list of changes is:

• purge functions moved to Octave and remove pre-2.9.x support.
• comm: new functions pam/genqam/psk mod/demod
• combinatorics: new functions for integer partitions
• geometry: fix qhull problems (finally!?)
• signal: new function square to generate square waves
• statistics: new function hmm viterbi/generate
• strings: remove regexp; api changed when moved to Octave
• linear-algebra: new function for gsvd
• general bug fixes and improvements

Octave Forge version 20060316 released. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• statistics/regress: new function
• general bug fixes and improvements

Octave Forge version 20060128 released. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• audio/waveread: big-endian fix; 2-channel file fix
• comm/galois: fix rank calculation for galois array
• general/interp2: cubic interpolation
• image/: return MxNx3 matrices of appropriate numeric class
• io/textread: faster
• io/dlmwrite: control precision and line separator; allow append
• miscellaneous/mfilename: compatibility function
• miscellaneous/listen: subnet patterns; loopback support
• NaN/xcovf: missing data xcorr
• octcdf/: support for netcdf files
• optim/wpolyfit: return row vector; allow centering and scaling
• plot/legend: fix error on first call
• plot/print: add PDF option
• signal/residued,residuez: partial fraction expansion of filters
• signal/qp_kaiser: PPN filter bank coefficients
• statistics/histfit: allow negative data
• statistics/mvnpdf,mvnrnd: multivariate normal distribution
• tsa/: improved speed, style and docs
• tsa/amarma: adaptive mean ARMA modeling
• tsa/y2res: add entropy estimation; add equidistant quantisation
• tsa/mvfreqz: add PDCF
• support for 2.9.4
• support for 64-bit indexing
• support for MinGW build
• general bug fixes and improvements

Octave Forge version 20050613 released. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• textread now returns cell arrays
• use new gnuplot interface for functions
• fix rand bug on non-intel architectures
• more econometrics functions
• new functions: randg, cellfun, cell2mat, bwarea, imresize, savepath
• bug fixes and improvements

Octave Forge version 20041116 released. Extends support to Octave 2.1.62. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• initial econometrics toolbox
• updated protein databank (extra/pdb) functions
• new functions: wavread wavwrite hann strfind randp sprandn conv2nan
• many bug fixes and improvements

Octave Forge version 20040907 released. Extends support to Octave 2.1.58. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• Base
  • getfield/setfield now have a compatible interface; for the old behaviour, use setfields/getfields.
  • Fill full 53-bit mantissa with the random number generators; new sequences will be different from old sequences with the same seed.
  • Removed restrictions on datenum/datevec and added calendar/eomday
  • Added nthroot to return real root if available
  • Added isa to test for class membership
  • clf resets to line graphs
  • Quiver plot is faster and no longer requires clf
  • Added audio playback on OS X
• Image processing
  • Initial support for int* types.
  • Added dilate erode bweuler bwmorph houghtf stretchlim makelut applylut uintlut padarray roicolor poly2mask qtdecomp qtgetblk qtsetblk bestblk blkproc nlfilter cmunique cmpermute col2im im2col graycomatrix conndef isrgb
• Optimization
  • Replacement fzero using Brent's root finder
• Communications:
  • Support for concatenation operator [] on galois type
  • Reduce restrictions on bchpoly syndtable
• Signal processing:
  • Added flattopwin
  • fir1/fir2 have more flexible argument handling
• Sparse:
  • Load/save support
  • Support for concatenation operator []
  • Added pcr for preconditioned conjugate gradient
• Statistics:
  • Added histfit pareto tabulate anderson_darling_cdf anderson_darling_test

Octave Forge version 20040707 released. Extends support to Octave 2.1.57. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• The optimization functions have been replaced but the new interface is not yet settled. See the files in the optim directory.
• New package gsl: GNU Scientific library bindings.
• New package fixed: Fixed point numeric operations.
• New functions: polyconf wsolve fullfact pcg princomp filtic rande azimuth deg2rad rad2deg distance zoom inputname fnval fftconv2 mvaar
• Bug fixes everywhere they are found.

Octave Forge version 20040211 released. Extends support to Octave 2.1.53 for all oct-files. Improved build environment and better testing. We still need more tests! If you need a function and don't see any test cases in it, add some and send them our way. See 'help test' for details. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• Changes
  • rand/randn: generates a different random number sequence from before.
• New functions
  • anovan: analysis of variance
  • append_save: add a variable to a save file
  • assert: now supports structure arrays and cell arrays
  • BFGSMin: alternative to bfgs minimizer
  • conv2nan: 2-D convolution which ignores missing data
  • convhull/convhulln: now allows direct control of qhull parameters
  • csape: support n=3 case --- need to verify it is correct
  • dxfwrite: output plot to DXF format (AutoCAD)
  • fail: checks if code fails with a given error message
  • galois: load/save support
  • gpick: alternative to ginput
  • imread: now supports 16-bit grayscale
  • irsa_*: irregularly sampled data analysis functions
  • map: apply a function across all elements of a cell array
  • mex: initial support for structures
  • pngread/pngwrite: direct access to libpng
  • quadl: improved adaptive quadrature routine
  • rand/randn: faster and now supports for nD arrays
  • sort: fast sort based on python's timsort
  • sprandn: random sparse matrix filled with normally distributed values
  • str2double: convert string to double
  • struct: now creates structure arrays
  • toggle_grace_use: use grace plotting package rather than gnuplot
  • xmlwrite: save data to xml format
• Plus the usual bug fixes and documentation updates.

Octave Forge version 20030602 released. For Octave 2.1.36 and up. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• Extended support backward to octave 2.1.36 and forward to octave 2.1.49 for all oct-files. Some scripts make use of features only available in more recent versions of Octave.
• Communications:
  • sqrt over Galois field
  • BCH code, modulator
  • bug fixes and documentation improvements
• Image:
  • added rotate_scale()
• Optimization:
  • added Nick Higham's adsmax, mdsmax nmsmax for fmins
  • lp() fix range error
• Plotting:
  • surf()/surfc() support gnuplot 3.8i shaded surfaces
  • added peaks()
  • legend() inside/ouside/boxon/boxoff/right/left
• Signal Processing:
  • added freqs, invfreqs, invfreqz
  • return statespace and laplacian IIR filters (butter, cheby1, cheby2, ellip)
  • fixed aryule() to return the correct filter
• Statistics:
  • added normplot()
  • scatter() optimization
• Sparse:
  • added concatenation functions spvcat() and sphcat()
• Symbolic:
  • added poly2sym, sym2poly, numden, findsymbols, findsym, symlsolve, symfsolve, syminfo
  • subs() accepts cell arrays
• TSA/NaN:
  • many bug fixes and documentation improvements
• Miscellaneous:
  • added cellstr()
  • fieldnames() now returns cell array
  • listen() bugfixes
  • ellipke() supports m < 0
  • deal() now supports [a,b] = deal(b,a)
  • dlmread() converted to C++ for speed and more flexible input
• Administration:
  • target specific build instructions (MacOSX, windows, Irix)

Octave Forge version 20030222 released. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• Updates for octave 2.1.45
• Parallel: Light weight parallel programming added but flagged NOINSTALL.
• Communications: add galois field functions and others
• Signal Processing: add convmtx and dftmtx
• Geometry: add (poor) griddata/tsearch support --- please improve!!
• VRML: new options 'z(grey|rb|col)' for vmesh() and vrml_surf(). Fixes and improvements to many functions.
• NaN: enhanced cov/covm, NaN arithmetic fixes
• TSA: bug fix (matlab 5.3 bug)
• Sparse: add spstats and x.^a, more robust
• Base functions: add fileparts, filesep, char, dos; improve dlmread
• Function overloading: dispatch() lets you call tf rather than f if the first argument to f is t.
• Octave server: listen() sets up a socket to receive octave commands from a particular host --- please improve!!
• Many fixes, compatibility improvements and better Windows support.

Octave Forge version 20021130 released. For Octave 2.1.40. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• New functions
  • general/ndims: compatibility function
  • image/imginfo: determines size of image using 'convert'
  • image/colfilt: image block filtering function
  • image/im​{rotate,translate,shear}: image transformations
  • miscellaneous/inline: generate a function from an expression
  • miscellaneous/slurp_file: loads a file into a string
  • miscellaneous/​{rotv,rotparams}: parameterize 3D rotation matrices
  • plot/contour.f: filled contours
  • sparse/​{sprand,spdiags,issparse}: sparse functions
  • specfun/lambertw: Lambert's W function: x=w(x)*exp(w(x))
  • specfun/betaln: log beta
  • splines/pchip: Piecewise Cubic Hermitian Interpolating Polynomial
  • statistics/{boxplot,scatter}: statistical plots
  • symbolic/{cheb,chebwin}: Dolph-Chebyshev windows
  • vrml/vmesh: 3D visualization of a surface
  • vrml/*: represent and show 3D objects as VRML code (needs FreeWRL)
• Extended interfaces
  • audio/au{load,save}: support floating point .wav formats
  • image/colorgradient: allow instantaneous transitions (weight 0)
  • optim/wpolyfit: option to fit through origin
  • signal/{ellip,ellipord}: compatible interfac
  • sparse/spy: accept dense matrices
  • strings/mat2string: accept [] and complex
  • symbolic/*: relational operators
  • time/datestr: more format codes; handle vectors of dates
• Changed interfaces
  • image/bwlabel: C++ version---may be different from m-file interface
  • extra/ode: moved from v1.06 to v1.14
  • optim/*: unified interface supporting options
  • optim/wpolyfit: don't return yf
  • optim/wpolyfit: return row vectors for compatibility with polyfit
  • signal/nellip: replaced by ellip, ellipord
  • OCTAVE_FORGE_VERSION is now an ordered integer: yyyymmdd
  • FIXES/fsolve: removed because it hasn't been updated to 2.1.40
• extra/tsa
  • significance test and confidence intervals for PACF
  • added histogram functions for multicolumn data
  • support for new releases of octave and matlab
  • bug fixes
• extra/NaN
  • added TRIMEAN, NORMPDF, NORMCDF and NORMRND
  • extended NANTEST
  • significance test and confidence intervals for CORRCOEF
  • faster RANKS
  • support for new releases of octave and matlab
• Internal changes
  • extra/symband: eigenvector bug removed
  • io/dlmread: returned matrix was transposed
  • general/rat: display 1/0 for infinity
  • plot/ginput: m-file version based on grab.cc
  • plot/legend: give gnuplot time to respond to parameter request
  • signal/{buttord,fir1}: bug fixes
  • sparse/spy: prettier graph
  • gcc 3.2 updates
  • octave 2.1.40 updates
  • remove functions and fixes that are now in octave
• Administration
  • vrml/doc: LaTeX tutorial on 3D visualization tools
  • Octave for Windows FAQ updates
  • INSTALL.WINDOWS installation notes
  • support for static build under Windows

Octave Forge version 20020509 released. This is a bug fix release. Many thanks to the good folks at Debian for finding the portability problems. An abbreviated list of changes is:

• New functions
  • miscellaneous/​OCTAVE_FORGE_VERSION
  • extra/tsa/durlev
  • strings/base64encode
  • signal/guasswin
  • image/colfilt
• Changes
  • audio/sound: uses ssh rather than rsh for remote audio
  • testfun/assert: use tol > 0 for relative error, tol < 0 for absolute err
  • optim/bfgs: new interface
  • optim/minimize: ndiff, jac, hess and ihess options
  • NaN/sumskipnan: additional outputs
  • NaN/*: bug fixes
• Bug fixes
  • signal/triang: for n=2, peak=1 at the virtual center of the window
  • signal/gaussian: now returns a symmetric window
  • now compiles on most Debian systems which support Octave.
  • updated doc strings, tests
• Administration
  • make check and make icheck added. Only supports the compiled functions at the moment, but it is a start.