{"id":125,"date":"2008-07-08T19:47:54","date_gmt":"2008-07-08T18:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=125"},"modified":"2008-07-16T10:46:47","modified_gmt":"2008-07-16T09:46:47","slug":"whats-new-in-mathematica-603","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=125","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s new in Mathematica 6.0.3?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wolfram Research released version 6.0.3 of Mathematica a little while ago now but, as usual, it took me a while to find the time to download and install it.  Over the last month or so I have been bothering various people at Wolfram Research for more details on this new release and I am happy to say that they have been very helpful &#8211; so a big thanks to them for much of what follows.  So let&#8217;s see what new goodies 6.0.3 has got compared to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=78\">version 6.0.2<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Possibly the most important thing you need to know about this release (if you are a Windows user) is that you should <a href=\"http:\/\/support.wolfram.com\/mathematica603update.html\">completely uninstall previous versions of Mathematica 6.x<\/a> before installing 6.0.3.  Exactly what might go wrong is still a mystery to me but, if I get really bored, I might try installing 6.0 side by side with 6.0.3 on a virtual machine to see what happens.  If you would prefer it that everything just worked though, I suggest you take their advice.<\/p>\n<p>Now that we have that out of the way &#8211; let&#8217;s look at the actual updates.  One of the most visual changes is the work that Wolfram have done on the Documentation Center.  There is now a comprehensive list of the standard extra packages included in the help system &#8211; something that was missing before.  This gives a very useful overview of the many packages that are included with Mathematica but not loaded by default such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.combinatorica.com\/\">Combinatorica<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/reference.wolfram.com\/mathematica\/EquationTrekker\/tutorial\/EquationTrekker.html\">Equation Trekker<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/reference.wolfram.com\/mathematica\/VectorAnalysis\/tutorial\/VectorAnalysis.html\">the Vector Analysis Package<\/a>.  An online version of this list can be found <a href=\"http:\/\/reference.wolfram.com\/mathematica\/guide\/StandardExtraPackages.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Mathematica 6.0.3 also includes quite a large number of bug fixes.  In no particular order &#8211; the following have been fixed<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Under Microsoft Windows Vista there was a bug in 6.0.2 and earlier that manifested itself when you tried to print multiple copies of a notebook.  The number of copies printed was the square of the number of copies selected.  Version 6.0.3 prints the correct number of copies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>On Linux, If you were running 6.0.2 or below on a compositing window manager such as Compiz then the Mathematica front end would display some inactive, blank windows.  There was also a problem with the font rendering on distributions such as Ubuntu Hardy Heron and Fedora Core 9 (as described <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=112\">here<\/a>) .  This has now been fixed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li> In previous versions there was a problem with MatrixForm and TableForm in that the TableAlignment option would be ignored and everything would be aligned to the left no matter what you selected.  For example in 6.0.2\n<p>MatrixForm[10^RandomInteger[{0, 6}, {5, 5}], TableAlignments -&gt; Center]<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/math603\/MatrixFormLeft.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>but in 6.0.3 we get<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/math603\/MatrixFormCentre.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>as you would expect.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In previous versions of Mathematica 6 there was a small problem with ListPlot that can be demonstrated by the following command.\n<p>ListPlot[{{1, 2, 3, 4}, {5}}, PlotMarkers -&gt; {&#8220;X&#8221;, &#8220;O&#8221;}]<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/math603\/ListPlotbug.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As you can see, the O plot marker has an X plot marker superimposed over it.  This has now been fixed in 6.0.3 and the above command gives the following.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/math603\/ListPlotFix.jpg\" \/><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In 6.0.2 and earlier versions, the front end could crash in specific Manipulate outputs containing a Graphics[] expression that was selected.  This is fixed in 6.0.3<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In older versions of Mathematica if you tried to import a Protein Data Bank (PDB) File that had columns with no spacing between them such as\n<p>&#8220;ATOM   2980  C2    C B  62      10.650 -13.795-100.493  1.00 52.72   C  &#8220;<\/p>\n<p>Then the import would fail.  6.0.3 fixes this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Pre 6.0.3, ListPlot would ignore the SetOptions command.  For example &#8211; the following two commands should produce a joined up plot.\n<p>SetOptions[ListPlot, Joined -&gt; True];<\/p>\n<p>ListPlot[Range[50]^2]<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/math603\/SetOptionsBug.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Version 6.0.3 behaves as you would expect<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/math603\/SetOptionsFix.jpg\" \/><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>A minor printing bug has been fixed &#8211; In 6.0.2 and earlier 6.0 versions, no cell brackets will print even if the <strong>Print cell brackets<\/strong> Box is Checked in the Printing Options Dialog.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In 6.0.2 and below the AxesLabel would overlap with the tick marks on 3D plots:\n<p>Graphics3D[{}, BoxRatios -&gt; {1, 1, 0.4}, Axes -&gt; True, PlotRange -&gt; {{0, 10}, {0, 0.4}, {0, 400}},PlotRangePadding -&gt; Scaled[0.02], AxesLabel -&gt; {t, x}]<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/math603\/tickbug.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In 6.0.3 this has been fixed<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/math603\/tickfix.jpg\" \/><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Finally, String handling in CSV file imports has changed back to the way it is documented in Mathematica.  In version 6.0.2 (but not in earlier versions), if you had a CSV file that contained something like\n<p>&#8220;hope&#8221;<br \/>\n1<br \/>\n2<\/p>\n<p>and you imported it into Mathematica then you would get the following result<\/p>\n<p>{{&#8220;hope&#8221;}, {1}, {2}}<\/p>\n<p>Now you get<\/p>\n<p>{{hope}, {1}, {2}}<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As far as I know &#8211; that&#8217;s pretty much it.  So, in a nutshell 6.0.3 is a set of bugfixes (none of them Mathematical) along with some nice documentation additions.  Nothing spectacular but pretty much what one expects for such a minor release increment.  Thanks to the staff at Wolfram Research who helped me out with the details on this one.<\/p>\n<p>If you found this article useful, feel free to <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/WalkingRandomly\">click here to subscribe to my RSS Feed <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wolfram Research released version 6.0.3 of Mathematica a little while ago now but, as usual, it took me a while to find the time to download and install it. Over the last month or so I have been bothering various people at Wolfram Research for more details on this new release and I am happy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-math-software","category-mathematica"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3swhs-21","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}