PDL/2.4.10/README.txt

+-------------------------------------------------+ | | | Draft release of the PDL Book for PDL-2.4.10 | | - PDL-Book-20120205.pdf | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ Release Notes for PDL 2.4.10 -------------------------- General Notes: New Stuff: * PDL::Constants module provides E, PI, I (or J) and more. * PDL::NiceSlice has a new engine based on Filter::Simple which is more selective about where the PDL::NiceSlice source filter is applied. * pdl() constructor now accepts a string argument which can include MATLAB-style [ ; ] syntax, bad values, inf values, and nan values. This makes it much easier to specify pdl values in programs and scripts. * PDL now supports pthreads on all platforms as well as a new, auto-parallelization capability for PDL threadloops across multiple processors using the PDL::ParallelCPU module. * Many(!) bug fixes. Incompatible Changes: * List output from whichND is now deprecated. * The default.perldlrc uses PDL::Constants to provide E and PI. * perldl.conf has new fields so be sure to update any local versions you use with the new fields. * rcols and wcols always use dim0 for the data dimension and dim1 for the column dimension. This only matters if you use the support for reading multiple columns into a 2D pdl. * Makefile.PL now requires at least version 6.31 of ExtUtils::MakeMaker to support the new standard INSTALL_BASE option matching Module::Build usage. * Prerequisite Text::Balanced minimum version is now 1.89 although this is not expected to be an issue because it is provided in the perl core since 5.8.0. Highlights: * General cleanup of code, including restructuring for clarity. * List output from whichND() is now deprecated. whichND() now returns a piddle of coordinates in all cases with a warning when a list context is detected. See the docs for work-arounds to your code. * PDL::IO::Misc now has better support for handles that are not files (e.g., pipes or standard input) for rgrep(), rcols(),... * Added bad value support to pctover() and oddpctover(). This was sf.net feature #3328001. * New whereND() routine provides the same functionality as where but with support for multi-dimensional masks and implicit threading over higher dimensions. This was sf.net feature request #3390043. * Many bugs fixed. 3059083 Problems with FITS header handling 3080505 PLplot segfaults on plshades call on OS X 3285520 status message from gslmroot_fsolver 3294808 sever on Empty piddle causes segfault 3295544 NiceSlice parsing bug 3299611 FITS I/O obscure bug 3300467 NiceSlice asterisk parsing issue 3307121 wmpeg sometimes kills perldl if file already exists 3307613 indexND of Empty pdls can segfault 3368883 t/opengl.t fails if display type not available 3375837 _read_flexhdr state machine fails 3388862 tiny bug in PDL-2.4.3. May apply to 2.4.9 3391645 bad printf formats in pdlapi.c and others 3394327 PDL::IO::FITS::wfits corrupting FITS image 3396738 PDL::Core::convert default return type 3410905 t/pgplot.t hangs test harness for PDL 3415115 whereND fails to handle all zero mask case 3428356 PDL::Transform::map output FITS header is slightly wrong 3434842 Error in definition of gsl_sf_laguerre_n function * PDL::Constants now provides: E, PI, I and J and is loaded by the default.perldlrc. It is not yet part of 'use PDL' so you'll need to 'use PDL::Constants ...' by hand for now. * default.perldlrc sets $PDL::IO::FlexRaw::writeflexhdr=1 by default so that writeflex() to a filename automatically writes the header file. This is different from the previous behavior but it seems to "do what you mean". Feedback welcome! * PDL::NiceSlice now has a new engine based on Filter::Simple which is smarter about only applying the slicing source filter to syntax occurring outside of POD, comments, and quotelike strings. The new implementation is available for *files* by setting the PDL_NICESLICE_ENGINE environment variable to 'Filter::Simple'. Work is underway to port the new niceslice filter implementation to perldl/pdl2. Once this task is completed, the new engine will become the default source filter and the PDL_NICESLICE_ENGINE environment variable will be removed. * There is experimental support for PDL::NiceSlice syntax in the perl debugger (i.e., perl -d). Just set the PERL5DB environment variable to 'BEGIN { require "PDLdb.pl" }' to use niceslice from the debugger command line. If PERL5DB is already set, you'll need to adjust the above recipe accordingly. * Better handling of build configuration options from perldl.conf as well as improvements in the detection of external dependencies. * perldl.conf has some new fields added: - POSIX_THREADS_INC and POSIX_THREADS_LIBS to specify locations of your pthread header file and library - PDL_CONFIG_VERSION to track the perldl.conf VERSION - PDLDOC_IGNORE_AUTOLOADER to control pdldoc behavior - PDL_BUILD_DIR provides the build directory path - PDL_BUILD_VERSION provides the PDL build version (to help with ambiguity from multiple PDL installs) NOTE: If you are using a private or customized perldl.conf file, please be sure to update with these additional fields as the perl Makefile.PL doesn't yet detect version skew automatically. * PDL::IO::Browser now builds in many cases (but not all). If you try it, please let us know how it goes. Just edit the value of WITH_IO_BROWSER in your perldl.conf before configuring the build (i.e., perl Makefile.PL). * PDL::PP has seen some significant improvements including code cleanup, improved documentation, and code refactoring for comprehension. There is a new PDL::PP::pp_line_numbers() routine which enables line # traceback for errors and warnings from PP code. * Improved error output from the pdl2 shell via the new CleanErrors plugin which filters out the non-PDL part of the error output leading to *much* more concise and helpful reports. * The pdl() constructor now accepts a string argument which allows for writing pdls using a matlab/octave style syntax as well as cutting and pasting from interactive session output to create pdls initializations for scripts and program files. The new constructor also allows for inf, nan, and bad to generate the appropriate values (case insensitive), e.g., $bad = pdl q[1 2 3 bad 5 6]; # Set fourth element to the bad value $bad = pdl q[1 2 3 BAD 5 6]; # ditto $bad = pdl q[1 2 inf bad 5]; # now third element is IEEE infinite value $bad = pdl q[nan 2 inf -inf]; # first value is IEEE nan value This is new functionality so feedback and problem reports are welcome. * PDL::Image2D has new routines: pnpoly() to determine the points in a polygon from the sequence of vertex coordinates, and cc4compt() for 4-component labeling of a binary image. * PDL now supports pdls larger than 2GiB. The element count is still an int type internally so the total number of elements per-piddle must be less than 2**31. * POSIX threads (pthreads) are supported for win32 and cygwin platforms. Pthreads are now available for all PDL platforms. * New PDL::ParallelCPU module provides automatic distribution of implicit thread loops across a number of processors. Now you can watch your PDL computations maximize the load on *all* your processors. See the docs for how to configure this feature and how to adjust your calculations to best take advantage of this feature. * PDL::Graphics::PLplot now works with the latest release of the PLplot library and has improved configuration and build handling. Feedback welcome. * rcols() and wcols() now use the same convention for multi-column input and output: dim0 is *always* the data dimension and dim1 corresponds to the columns in the file. This adjustment makes them their inverse operations. * The ADEV calculation in statsover has been corrected along with the documentation. * PDL::Graphics::TriD changes: - PDL::Graphics::TriD now builds using the perl OpenGL module (POGL) when configured on cygwin with the interface=W32API option. By default, POGL used interface=GLX on cygwin which does software rendering via Mesa/X11 (slower!). If you reinstall POGL with the W32API setting, you will need to rebuild PDL and PDL::Graphics::TriD to pick up the new configuration. - A new 4-line graphics demo contributed by Mark Baker has been added to 'demo 3dgal'. Take a look. * Various enhancements to FITS handling, including: - add map() fix for nonlinear FITS headers - Enable hdrpcy() in rfits() for Rice-compressed images * Test suite improvements to provide better diagnostics from failures and to make tests more correct avoiding "false fails" in the test reports. Various tests have been migrated to use File::Temp::tempdir and File::Temp::tempfile to improve the robustness for temporary files and directories naming and creation during tests. * Update ExtUtils::MakeMaker required version to 6.31 to support the new standard of INSTALL_BASE to configure for a local perl/PDL module installation. * Update Text::Balanced required version to 1.89. This is the version present in perl 5.8.0 (the minimum required for PDL) so this change in requirement is not expected to affect any PDL users. * pdldoc now searches your PDLLIB path for PDL::AutoLoader docs in addition to the pre-extracted documentation database. This makes pdldoc give the same output as the help command in the PDL shells. * Many updates and additions to the PDL documentation. * Devel::CheckLib is being used in more places during the PDL configuration stage. We plan to make this the standard baseline for dependency library detection going forwards. The included copy of Devel::CheckLib has been updated to 0.95. * A new unified implementation of barf()/warn() for PDL removes code duplication. barf() is now defined in both PDL::Core and the PDL packages. PDL::cluck is added as an analog of Carp::cluck (as PDL::barf is an analog of Carp::confess). barf() now generates its stack trace by hooking into Carp::confess on both the Perl and C sides. * Various fixes for PDL::Transform - fix inverse in perspective() - fix t_cubic() parameter parsing - fix handling of multiple PCi_j systems in the piddle header * Added SIGPIPE handlers to cases where PDL uses pipes to/from external processes (such as ffmpeg or some NetPBM image converter programs). This should make PDL "SIGPIPE safe" by not exiting when a PDL piped IO output process quits (e.g., as when called from within the perldl/pdl2 shell).