PeZ Compatibility Issues

Matlab is an interpreted language that runs on several computer platforms. While the majority of Matlab core programs work flawlessly across different machines, it would be optimistic to hope that a language environment could be created that would work 100% of the time for all machine configurations. Since graphical functions vary the most from machine os to os, the problem becomes even more frustrating for those attempting to create a consistent Graphical User Interface on multiple machines.

PeZ attempts to compensate for differences not only between machines, but also between different versions of Matlab. Currently there are two major revisions of Matlab- v4.2 and v5.x. While Mathworks did a great amount of work in v5.0 to stay compatible with v4.2, there are some large changes that make this difficult. This page will hopefully help in correcting some problems you may experience for your particular system.

Machines Tested on:

At one point or another, I can say that we've run Pez on the following machines:

HP-Unix: v4.2/5.0
PC-Win95: v4.2
PC-NT: v5.0
Mac: v4.2/5.0

If you have errors or bug reports, please let me know.

Warning Messages (v5.0+)

Due to gui changes in Matlab v5.0, Matlab will warn you the first time you attempt to use a gui call designed for v4.2. While a great number of these warnings have been fixed, there is one particular warning that happens every time pez is started in a Matlab shell for the first time. The command line will spit out a warning very much like this one:

>> pez
>>
Warning: Setting marker type based on 'LineStyle' property
'Marker' and 'LineStyle' have been made separate properties
Use 'Marker' property to remove this warning.
> In /home/users/joe_six_pack/pez_plot.m at line 57
In /home/users/joe_six_pack/pez_bin.m at line 129

This is not a problem. This is a simple warning that is necessary in order to stay compatible with Matlab v4.2. Again, this warning should only pop up once in a new shell.

Mouse Pointer Residue (Mac)

There is a bug with Matlab's ginput() command that will on occasion cause old pointer graphics to remain on the screen. Currently there isn't much of a fix other than to get an updated copy from Mathworks.

End-of-Line Termination (Unix vs. Mac vs. PC)

The PC, MAC, and Unix text file formats use different termination characters for Text files. Therefore, if you are a PC person reading a text file typed on a Unix box, chances are you'll see one long stream of characters with no carriage returns. This is an age old problem and don't bug me about it. Since Unix is the most universal text format, it is the format of choice. It SHOULD run FINE on all three platforms since Matlab doesn't care too much about white space. If you need to edit the files:

Unix: No problem, is in the right format. There is a common utility called "dos2unix" that can do the translations.
PC: If you need to convert there are programs out there, but you can simply use edit.com to make the change. Edit is a simple do editor that comes with windows that is smart enough to make the conversion automatically. Load the file, then save it.
Mac: Not sure, there are supposedly common converters.

Sluggy Updates (Mac)

Mac's seem to have a bug in the way that plot updates are done. Since I couldn't find a guaranteed fix for this, the Mac version does plain updates of all plots. This will be a good deal slower for real-time generation, but it seems to work.

Missing Functions

Some installations of Matlab may not have all the source files installed. While Pez has been written to use as few external functions as possible, you may get unusual errors that seem to indicate a function cannot be performed. Here are the missing functions I have seen:

grpdelay.m : You may see some error about frs_omega or something. I found this when I did not install all of the signal libraries with Matlab v4.2 on a PC. Pez attempts to detect this, but is not 100% effective.
filtdemo.m : This is a m-file that comes with the signal processing toolbox. You may not have it installed, Pez should now avoid this missing function and just warn you about it.

If you are missing the file, the solution is to just make a dummy version of it. For example, if you do not have grpdelay.m (do a "which grpdelay"), then create the following file called grpdelay.m in your current directory:

function grpdelay

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