Release 11 New Features      

Visualization Enhancements

Figure Window Enhancements

Accessing Off-Screen Visible Figures

You can use the new findfigs function to find all visible figures that are positioned completely off-screen and make them visible on screen, at the top left corner of the screen.

New Menu Items in the Figure Window

When you create a plot, the File menu in the figure window now includes three new items:

A new Tools menu now appears in the menu bar of the figure window. It contains menu items for the Plot Editor and for zoom and rotate functions, which are described below.

For UNIX platforms, the Figure Window menu bar has been enhanced to match the functionality of the PC Figure Window menu bar.

New Toolbar in Figure Window

When you create a plot, the figure window now includes a toolbar for quick access to popular features that also appear in the File menu. Position the cursor over a button, and a tooltip describing that feature appears.

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The zoom in and out buttons allow you magnify or reduce the size of the figure. For 2-D plots, the zoom buttons use the zoom command, and for 3-D plots, they use the camzoom command.

The rotate button rotates a 3-D plot, using the rotate3d command.

The Plot Editor is an easy-to-use tool you use to add and modify:

The Plot Editor is described in more detail in the next section.

The Plot Editor

This illustration shows the main features of the Plot Editor.


New Context-Sensitive Help

There is a new form of help available for the dialog boxes in the Plot Editor and the Page Setup dialog box. For these dialog boxes, click the Help button in a dialog box to go directly to help for that dialog box.

See the "Online Documentation Enhancements" earlier in this chapter for details about context-sensitive help.

New Look for the PrintFrame Editor

While the functionality for the PrintFrame Editor has not changed, its user interface has a new look. In addition, help for the PrintFrame Editor now is available directly from the Help menu. To access the PrintFrame Editor, use the frameedit command.


Support for HDF/EOS Development Tools

MATLAB 5.3 provides three additional functions that act as gateways to the Hierarchical Data Format/Earth Observing System (HDF/EOS), for grid, point, and swath objects.

HDF/EOS, an extension of the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) HDF standard, is the scientific data format standard selected by NASA as the baseline standard for EOS. The functions in the HDF-EOS C library are developed and maintained by EOSDIS (Earth Observing System Data and Information System).

The new MATLAB functions are listed below.

Function
 Description
hdfgd
 HDF-EOS GD (grid) interface
hdfpt
 HDF-EOS PT (point) interface
hdfsw
 HDF-EOS SW (swath) interface

In addition to the MATLAB online help for HDF functions, you should also have the document HDF-EOS Library User's Guide for the ECS Project, Volume 1: Overview and Examples and Volume 2: Function Reference Guide. This document is available on the Web at http://hdfeos.gsfc.nasa.gov. If you are unable to obtain the document from this location, please contact MathWorks Technical Support (support@mathworks.com).

New Histogram Function

You can use the new histc function for binning vector elements. histc differs from the hist function in that it uses bin edges to define the bins. The output vector can be plotted with the bar function.

New Plotting Functions

MATLAB 5.3 provides a set of new plotting functions to graph mathematical expressions. Key features of these functions include:

These functions provide easy to use plotters.

Function
 Purpose
ezcontour
 Contour plotter
ezcontourf
 Filled contour plotter
ezmesh
 3-D mesh plotter
ezmeshc
 Combination mesh/contour plotter
ezplot
 Function plotter
ezplot3
 3-D parametric curve plotter
ezpolar
 Polar coordinate plotter
ezsurf
 3-D colored surface plotter
ezsurfc
 Combination surf/contour plotter

New Volume Visualization Functions

MATLAB supports a set of new functions for visualizing 3-D scalar and vector data.

Function
 Purpose
coneplot
 Plot velocity vectors as cones in a 3-D vector field
contourslice
 Draw contours in volume slice planes
isocaps
 Compute isosurface end-cap geometry
isonormals
 Compute normals of isosurface vertices
isosurface
 Extract isosurface data from volume data
reducepatch
 Reduce the number of patch faces
reducevolume
 Reduce the number of elements in a volume data set
shrinkfaces
 Reduce the size of patch faces
smooth3
 Smooth 3-D data
stream2
 Compute 2-D stream line data
stream3
 Compute 3-D stream line data
streamline
 Draw stream lines from 2-D or 3-D vector data
surf2patch
 Convert surface data to patch data
subvolume
 Extract subset of volume data set

findobj More Flexible

The findobj function now accepts any property value that is allowed with set. For example,

can now be written

Rectangle Object Added

MATLAB 5.3 adds a new rectangle Handle Graphics object. Use the rectangle function to create a rectangle object.

legend Enhancements

MATLAB 5.3 enhances the legend function to:

To support these enhancements, MATLAB 5.3 treats the legend text as one text object, grouping all the text together.

New Figure Properties

DoubleBuffer Figure Property

Figure objects have a new property called DoubleBuffer, which accepts the values on and off, with off being the default. Double buffering works only when the figure Renderer property is set to painters.

Double buffering is the process of drawing to an off-screen pixel buffer and then displaying (blitting) the buffer contents on the screen once the drawing is complete. Double buffering generally produces flash-free rendering for simple animations (such as those involving lines, as opposed to objects containing large numbers of polygons). Use double buffering with the animated objects' EraseMode property set to normal. Use the set command to enable double buffering:

XDisplay, XVisual, XVisualMode Properties - UNIX Only

XDisplay.    You can display a figure window on a different display using the XDisplay property. For example, to display the current figure on a system called fred, use the command:

XVisual.    You can select the visual used by MATLAB by setting the XVisual property to the desired visual ID. This can be useful if you want to test your application on an 8-bit or grayscale visual. To see what visuals are available on your system, use the UNIX xdpyinfo command. From MATLAB type:

The information returned contains a line specifying the visual ID. For example:

To use this visual with the current figure, set the XVisual property to the ID:

XVisualMode.    XVisualMode can take on two values - auto (the default) and manual. In auto mode, MATLAB selects the best visual to use based on the number of colors, availability of the OpenGL extension, etc. In manual mode, MATLAB does not change the visual from the one currently in use. Setting the XVisual property sets this property to manual.

New FontName Property Value

The text and axes FontName properties accept a new value of fixedwidth. When FontName is set to fixedwidth, MATLAB uses the font name defined by the new root property FixedWidthFontName, which is Courier by default.

uint16 CData for Images

You can now define images with CData of class uint16.

Support for Portable Network Graphics Images

MATLAB can read or write images stored in the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format. The imread, imwrite, and imfinfo functions can now handle files stored in any of the following PNG formats:


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