Welcome to Scilab 6.1

Scilab 6.1 is a major new release of Scilab, the open-source platform for numerical computation.

Here is a tour of the changes between Scilab 6.1.0 & 6.1.1.

To have a tour with the help browser, enter --> help 6.1.1 in the console, and browse related pages.

Feature changes and additions

• The default Java Heap is increased from 256 to 512 MB. Heavier graphics can be rendered.
• Axes labels and title default font size had been increased for better default rendering.
• gsort is upgraded:
  • It can now sort any sparse 2D matrix, in all g, r, c, lr, lc methods, including sparse booleans, and in a multi-level mode. It was formerly limited to sparse real or complex vectors and only to the g mode.
  • Any hypermatrix can be sorted along a dimension > 2.
• unique is enabled for any 2D sparse arrays, in simple, 'c' and 'r' modes. Its 3rd output ku is now implemented.
• %chars constant added, to easily access to some selected sets of Unicode symbols.
• Lists are displayed more compactly and comprehensively.
• interp1 is upgraded:
  • complex numbers y now supported: the real and imaginary parts are interpolated separately.
  • extrapolation option extended: edgevalue mode added for all interpolations; periodic mode added for linear and spline interpolations. linear mode added for the spline interpolations.
• xlfont did not support the documented 4th argument.
• bitcmp is upgraded:
  • Entended to 64-bit integers.
  • Extended to all signed integers.
  • Decimal positive integers > 2^52 up to 2^1024 = number_properties("huge") can now be processed, with bitnum up to 1024 instead of 52.
  • bitnum can be an array. It is now optional as well for input decimal integers.
• The Arnoldi module is now internal.
• sgolay and the companion sgolayfilter and sgolaydiff functions have been added to implement Savitsky-Golay filters.
• clock now returns the time zone and the daylight saving time.
• mapsound is completely reforged.
• mprintf, msprintf and mfprintf can now print input booleans, as 0|1 or as T|F.
• setdiff now supports input booleans and sparse matrices (boolean or numeric).
• intersect is extended to any sparse boolean or numeric arrays, in all simple, 'c' or 'r' modes.
• union supports boolean, sparse boolean, and sparse numerical matrices.
• kron and .*. are extended to boolean arrays.
• gamma is extended to incomplete gamma integrals.
• close is extended to close the help browser, xcos, the variable browser or editor GUIs.
• polyint is introduced to compute polynomial antiderivatives.
• det is now actually extended to sparse matrices.
• deff is upgraded:
  • The created function may be returned as an output argument.
  • Providing the function headline and body concatenated in a single input text vector is possible.
  • For a simple function, a single string input definition can be provided.
  • For assignable calls to deff, the @ symbol can be used as a function pseudo-name.
• mopen and mclose now handle multiple files and file descriptors.
• hash function with SHA-1, SHA-2 and SHA-3 Secure Hash Algorithms has been added.
• plot can now plot polynomials and rationals.
• loglog, semilogx, semilogy Matlab-compatible functions added.
• scatter and scatter3d are reforged. New scatter options: "smallOnTop" and "datatips".
• asciimat now supports input strings of different lengths or including international UTF8 extended characters.
• importgui is renamed uiSpreadsheet.
• polynomials can now use a greek letter as variable.
• int2d can now compute direcly a double integral over a rectangle.
• int3d can now compute direcly a triple integral over a cuboid.
• cutaxes function added.
• Integers can be concatenated with real or complex numbers (dense encoding only).
• complex is extended to sparse arrays.
• m2sci Matlab-to-Scilab code converter: First upgrade done.
• http_get can be used as an alternative download method for ATOMS.
• browsevar: Clicking on a variable of type graphic, function, library, list, structure, cell, syslin, or any custom tlist or mlist now displays it.
• x_matrix is extended to booleans, encoded integers, and text. Editing real and complex matrices improved.
• Help browser improved:
  • New menu "Online" to display the current page online.
  • New menu "Issues" to display known issues about the feature of the current page.
  • On user's Preferences, for Scilab beginners coming from Matlab™/Octave languages, for more than 200 Matlab™ terms, help's query now redirects to the relevant Scilab equivalent feature.
  • And also: The browser's language can be set independently of the session's language ; ATOMS help chapters are now automatically loaded in the browser ; the page left at exit is restored at the next startup. etc.

Help pages

In a continuous effort, more than 100 pages have been improved or even rewritten, or/and better sorted in sections. Clarifying short descriptions, clarifying the set of syntaxes, completing and clarifying the description of arguments, improving cross-referencing through the See also sections, illustrating results of examples by showing the console's output, adding examples, updating the history sections for passed undocumented changes, and of course improving the Description sections, have been done.

In parallel, many pages are actively translated in Russian.

Bug fixes

In this version, extra effort has been expended on bug fixing and stabilization. Detailed information about those improvements can be found on the CHANGES file.

Documentation and help

If you are new to Scilab, please use the Scilab beginners tutorial and Xcos beginners tutorial provided by the Scilab Team.

The Scilab Team provides also some documentation and tutorials.

Other resources

Scilab Homepage - Consult Scilab official website

Wiki - Consult documentations, tricks, etc.

Bug Tracker - Report bugs and wishes about Scilab

Forge - Browse and publish Scilab modules

Mailing Lists - Communicate and exchange with the community

ATOMS - Browse Scilab packaged modules

File Exchange - Exchange your scripts, results and files.