Experiences with release 2013a

In the spirit of 2012b:

Did you try 2013a already? What do you like, what has still potential for further improvements, what makes working with Matlab harder than with earlier releases?

Interface changes (toolstrip, docs) were hot topics after 2012b. Has your opinion changed with 2013a?

[Marta]

I am looking for a table to help translate the R2012b error messages to R2013a error messages.

Answer 1

[Sven]

As far as the help docs go, one issue that I had with the 2012b changes was the loss of context once you were reading a page (or pages). This has been addressed with the re-introduction of a context pane, but I've still got a minor quibble that was brought up in comments here:

The context tree is always stuck at the top of the page, which makes it cumbersome if you want to browse the help docs – when you want to browse to another branch in the tree, you need to scroll to the top of whatever page you were looking at.

In the past I've gained a great deal of MATLAB knowledge from "browsing" the help in a fashion similar to:

1. You see a set of topics that are interesting (such as the 5 or 6 under MATLAB>Mathematics>Linear Algebra)
2. You want to click on one, check out it’s contents, then click on the next one

The problem at the moment comes when you read past the first few lines and start to scroll down. The whitespace where the context tree would sit is still there, but the context tree itself gets left behind at the top of the page.

It's just a minor touch, but there's a huge value in understanding how MATLAB topics relate to each that you would gain at a glance if the topic you were reading was shown in context with those related topics.

Edit:

Oh, interesting... the web version of the help works correctly when scrolling... perhaps the docs browser (which is getting more and more like a web browser) just hasn't implemented the required parsing/interpreting yet.

[Wendy Fullam]

Hi Sven, I'm the Marketing Product Manager for MathWorks documentation. Just wanted to note that the development team is aware that the ideal behavior would allow for a persistent table of contents that scrolls with the page, and that they are working to incorporate this change in a future release. Please let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns. Thanks!

[Eric Sampson]

Thanks Wendy! :)

[Sven]

Yep, thanks for letting us know Wendy :)

Answer 2

[Christophe]

Hi,

I am usually reluctant when upgrading, it's always painful. But I decided to make the jump from R2010b to R2013a on XP 32bits. What a slap... I upgraded only 24h ago. I spent the whole night and day passing a bunch of non-regression test. Is it my PC or the QA ? Regression is the word.

First, I have the feeling to work in slow motion : startup, IDE. It takes a looong time to start, on the same machine with no network connection, no antivirus, no nothing, compared to R2010b (I still have R2010b installed). Once calculating, it's OK, it's just the initialization and the IDE.

Talking of IDE, the look and feel 'a la Eclipse', as well as the graphical toolbar are - to me - unnecessary, and even counterproductive at first glance. Roll, little mouse, roll. Google does it (apparently) simple, that's part of the success.

So far, I tried to play with the huge collection of data produced by previous versions. First surprise, with the R2013a import button, because of the import popup window I can no longer open mat-files with custom extension from the IDE - I need to do it with a command line (I found no way to force a mat-file format for a .abc file, or I missed something ?). Unefficient, it was simply working fine up to R2010b.

Talking of import data/save workspace buttons in the IDE, sometimes they are not responding, it seems the functionality is dead in the toolbar (no sign of life, no java exception messages in the command line panel). And if (when) it works, sometimes a popup in the new import window say something like : "the following variables were imported" etc..., and nothing appears in the workspace... Until a good old .mat file is imported with the good old import wizard : then the content of the good old .mat file plus everything that has been silently discarded previously appears in the workspace. It smells funny. Is there an external dependency on something like a java version?

My code use matlab engines (written before DCT...) managed by MATLAB app through custom JAVA agents to perform single node cluster computing. The new thing is, because of some (*acceptable*) API changes in matlab functions (fileparts etc...), error were raised in mfiles run by engines . In those cases, engines are closed, and sometimes the handle of the faulty m-file seems not to be properly closed by the engine (?), so I can't fix the m-file (forbidden save) unless I reboot the station. not fun at all. Still, everything was OK in 2010b.

I didn't try other functionalities, but to me it will be hard to rely on such unstable environment to work with confidence.

I'm afraid I will find with this release other little but pretty annoying obstacles in the future without finding real improvements in the way I use MATLAB.

I'll try an earlier version tomorrow, the one before the introduction of the new interface, or I will keep R2010b.

But, regarding my future needs, I'm worried about the way your product is turning... and I will wait a while before buying DCT for my coming GPU plans.

ps : graphic rendering (and anti-aliasing!) is still unchanged, apparently. I exchange 100 IDEs like this one against one smooth rendering of 3D objects without sharp pixels !

Answer 3

[Leah]

I love the new linear regression class. Very powerful combined with datasets. It has made things much easier and cleaner for me. It's similar to R which really was doing it well.

http://www.mathworks.com/help/stats/linearmodelclass.html

Answer 4

[Marta]

Is there an easy way to translate error identifiers from R2012b to those from R2013a?

Answer 5

[David]

As the post linked here: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/67569

I am finding that 2013 is much 'laggier' (edits) and slower (run-time) then 2012. This is with the same preferences enabled while using the same files.

[Jan]

Could you provide details of your speed comparison?