New Scilab release

[Dr Scilab]

*****************************************
ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE RELEASE OF SCILAB 2.4
*****************************************

While the French soccer players trained for the world cup, Scilab
Group has worked hard to prepare Scilab-2.4 release. Faster than
before, stronger than before, Scilab can solve all your numerical
problems better than before.

WHAT IS SCILAB?
---------------

Scilab is a high-level language for numerical computations in a
user-friendly environment. Scilab is developed at INRIA and is
available free via anonymous ftp in source and binary formats. For
more information visit our Web site:
http://www-rocq.inria.fr/scilab/

WHAT IS NEW
------------

A stable version for Windows 95/NT.

And much more. Here are just a few highlights:

New toolboxes
=============
m2sci: beta version of a Matlab to Scilab translator.
Fraclab: fractal and wavelet analysis.
Tksci: Tk/Tcl interface.
PVM: beta PVM interface (not yet available on Windows).
dcd: cumulative distribution functions and inverses...
grand: random number generators.

New functionalities
===================
Metanet toolbox: Function "pipe_network" for solving pipe network problem
has been added.
Scicos toolbox: - New and improved formalism
- Faster Compiler
- Improved GUI
Maple toolbox: The Maple to Scilab interface (maple/maple2scilab.mpl)
has been improved. Sparse matrices are handled. There is
now the choice between C and Fortran code generation.
Nonlinear toolbox: Addition of 2D and 3D definite integrals int2d et int3d.
Data types: N dimensional arrays have been introduced (see
hypermatrices).
chdir and getcwd functions added to change and get working directory.
Floating exception:handling may be set by "ieee" function.
Overloading: It is now possible to overload display of tlist data
structure. It is also possible to extend basic
primitive function definition to new data types. To
avoid possible ambiguity overloading function names
have been changed. Old names still work, but for
efficiency it desirable to change it. See
overloading help.
Syntax: Functions with strings arguments may be called as commands.
For instance "exec('foo.sce')" can be entered as
"exec foo.sce". It is now possible to define
functions with unbounded number of input and output
arguments (see varargin help).

Bugs corrected
==============
A lot! And probably twice as many new ones introduced!

DISTRIBUTION
------------

As usual, Scilab is distributed free with the sources and runs
on Windows 95/NT, Linux and most Unix workstations. Scilab can be
obtained by anonymous ftp from
"ftp.inria.fr" (internet 192.93.2.54), in directory "/INRIA/Scilab".

In this directory you will find scilab-2.4-src.tar.gz which is
the source version and binary distributions for Windows, Linux and
some Unix systems.

As for previous release, the postscript documentations are available
in the subdirectory "Scilab-2.4-doc" and contributions of Scilab users
can be found in the subdirectory "contrib".

For questions and suggestions write to Sci...@inria.fr or better, or
better post a message to newsgroup comp.soft-sys.math.scilab

Doctor Scilab