Package: R.matlab
=================

Version: 1.2.4 [2008-10-29]
o If onWrite == NULL, then there is no longer an outer two-pass scan
  for figuring out the size of MAT structure.  However, instead
  each readDataElement() has to do a two-pass scan in order to 
  figure out the number of bytes before writing each element.
o BUG FIX: Arrays with more than two dimension would be written
  as vectors.  Thanks Minho Chae for reporting this.
o BUG FIX: From v1.2.2, writeMat() would generate corrupt MAT files.
  Reverted writeMat() back to v1.2.1 and updated as above.


Version: 1.2.3 [2008-07-20]
o Updated example(readMat) so that it gives no error if
  the optional 'Rcompression' package is not installed.


Version: 1.2.2 [2008-07-12]
o Now the first pass in writeMat() that counts the number of 
  bytes to be written is skipped if argument 'onWrite' is 
  not given.  This means that writing to file, which is the
  most common use case, will no longer involve the counting.
  Thank to Adam Grossman at Stanford University for suggesting
  the modification and providing initial code.  He reports
  a substantial speed up in writing large files (38MB file).
o CLEAN UP: Removed internal debugging/asserting code.
o Renamed the HISTORY file to NEWS.


Version: 1.2.1 [2008-05-08]
o In readMat()/writeMat() we use an internal character vector
  to represent the 8-bit ASCII character set.  However, in R
  one cannot represent ASCII 0x00 - it resolves to an empty
  string, and from R v2.8.0 we will get a warning if we try.
  For now, we have replaced the ASCII for 0x00 with the empty
  string (unless before R v2.6.0).  We might want to move 
  away from using this ASCII vector for intToChar()/charToInt() 
  and instead make use of intToUtf8()/utf8ToInt() or 
  alternatively just rawToChar()/charToRaw().


Version: 1.2.0 [2008-02-12]
o Added support for reading compressed MAT files.  It requires
  that the 'Rcompression' package (Omegahat.org) is available.
o Added support for also returning sparse matrices according to
  the representations given by either the 'Matrix' or the
  'SparseM' package.
o Added simple UTF-* string support.  Conversion should be 
  accurate when the R installation supports iconv.
o Added mat-files/StructWithSparseMatrix-v4.mat from JR.
o Credits for all of the above new feature goes to Jason Riedy
  at the Computer Science Dept, UC Berkeley.  Thanks also to 
  Duncan Temple-Lang at UC Davis for the Rcompression package.


Version: 1.1.4 [2007-04-19]
o Added a "hint" to error message 'Tag type not supported: 
  miCOMPRESSED' to clarify that readMat() does not support 
  compressed MAT files.


Version: 1.1.3 [2007-04-07]
o Update so that package passes R CMD check R v2.5.0.
o Replaced Sys.putenv() with new Sys.setenv() (to be 
  deprecated in R v2.5.0).

Version: 1.1.3 [2006-12-28]
o The example in help(Matlab) is now using default values for
  'host' and 'port' making the example less confusing.
o Now open() throws an error if connection to Matlab failed
  (before FALSE was returned).
o Extended the accepted range of ports to [1023,66535].
o Added more details on available options in setOption() and how
  to avoid time outs.


Version: 1.1.2 [2006-05-08]
o BUG FIX: When the port for the Matlab server (MATLABSERVER_PORT) was
  out of range, a Matlab syntax error occured, i.e "... Line: 109 
  Column: 45 ")" expected, "identifier" found.'.  Thanks Alexander
  Nervedi for reporting this.


Version: 1.1.1 [2006-01-21]
o Added argument 'port' to Matlab$startServer(..., port=NULL) to
  start the Matlab server such that it listens to another port than
  the default 9999.  Internally the server first tries to obtain
  the port number by environment variable 'MATLABSERVER_PORT'.
  This feature was requested by Wang Yu at Iowa State University.
o Another version has been added to the list of Matlab versions that
  are confirmed to work with R.matlab. See ?Matlab.


Version: 1.1.0 [2005-06-29]
o BUG FIX: Forgot to "implement" miSINGLE, i.e. to set 'knownTypes' 
  and 'knowWhats' for this. Thanks to Craig Aumann for the report.
o BUG FIX: readMat() did not read 'complex' matrices in MAT v5
  correctly.  Thanks again to Chris Sims for the bug report.
o BUG FIX: readMat() did not read 'text' matrices in MAT v4 
  correctly.  Thanks to Chris Sims, Princeton University, for
  for the patch.
o If using the Matlab class, the package requires the R.utils
  where the classes Java and Verbose was moved. The methods for 
  dealing with user options in the Matlab class are provided by 
  the Options class also in R.utils. Similarily, if verbose != FALSE
  in readMat() or writeMat(), then the R.utils package is required.


Version: 1.0.3 [2005-05-26]
o Added support for used defined options to Matlab objects via
  methods setOption() and getOption(). Current supported options
  are "readResult/maxTries" and "readResult/interval" to provide
  a "workaround" for the problem with timeout errors in evaluate().
  Thanks Thomas Romary, France, for (re-)reporting this problem.
o Added class Options. This will probably move to another package
  whenever it becomes stable and widely used.


Version: 1.0.2 [2005-05-03]
o Now Matlab struct's are read into an R structure.
o BUG FIX: Reading empty struct:s (and cells) tried to read one 
  field because seq(0) and not seq(length=0) was used. Updated all
  occurances of this problem.
o Replaces package directory misc/ with two new directories 
  mat-files/ and externals/.


Version: 1.0.1 [2005-04-08]
o BUG FIX: readMat() failed to read some Matlab struct's because
  of a parsing error.
o BUG FIX: Internally in readMat() - in readMat5DataStructure() it 
  might be data readTag() returns a tag referering to a data block 
  of zero length (nbrOfBytes == 0). Now list(NULL) is returned in 
  this case.
o BUG FIX: The MatlabServer script did (indeed) not work with 
  Matlab v7; the wrong version was included.
  Thanks Patrick Drechsler, University of Wuerzburg for reporting
  the above two problems.
o Minor additions to help pages.


Version: 1.0 [2005-02-25]
o Moved to CRAN.


Version: 0.94 [2005-02-24]
o Updated the MatlabServer.m script to automatically set the Java
  classpath for Matlab v7 and higher. This will assure that
  InputStreamByteWrapper.class is found as long as it is in
  the same directory as the *.m script. Thanks Yichun Wei at 
  University of Southern California for suggesting this and
  also for suggesting additional help instructions.
o Added a Wishlist and an Acknowledgements section to "about".
o Added more information on how to start the Matlab server.


Version: 0.93 [2005-02-20]
o Added autoload("hasVarArgs") to 000.R.
o Updated the Matlab example to be more explicit about problems
  with Matlab$startServer() and Matlab v7. 


Version: 0.92 [2005-02-17]
o Package now passes R CMD check on R v2.1.0 devel without warnings.
o Added appendVarArgs=TRUE to setMethodS3(), which specifies that
  '...' should be added, if missing.
o Add argument '...' to all methods to make it even more consistent
  with any generic function. This is also done for a few methods
  in the R base packages.
o BUG FIX: readMat() would not read non-signed bytes correctly.


Version: 0.91 [2005-02-11]
o Package passes R CMD check on R v2.1.0 devel too.
o Moved the Java class from R.io to this package, since it is
  currently only used here. It is used for reading and writing 
  Java bytes, ints and (UTF) strings when communicating with Matlab.
o Updated description of package. Preparing for moving to CRAN.
o Added Rdoc comments to internal Verbose classes.


Version: 0.8 [2004-02-24]
o Added a setVerbose() method to the Matlab class, which allows the
  user to get details at various levels of the Matlab process.
o WORK AROUND: It sometimes happens that the reply from Matlab is not
  transferred "quick enough" and even if the connection should block we
  receive NULL giving an error. The work around for now is to try to
  read the answer again. The symptom was that an error in readResult()
  complain about "if (answer == 0)" where answer was of length 0.
o Added support for reading sparse matrices. Sparse matrices
  are expanded to regular matrices, which means that some may
  be too large to be loaded.
o BUG FIX: The header of MAT v4 files was not parsed correctly, 
  which made MAT v4 files unrecognized and assumed to be 
  MAT v5 files which in turn could not be read.
o BUG FIX: Used "sparce" instead of "sparse" in MOPT[4] tag (MAT v4),
  which most likely would generate an error for such structure.


Version: 0.7 [2003-12-02]
o BUG FIX: Introduced a bug that made files written with big endian
  not to work. The reason was that "<-" was used instead of "<<-"
  in one new method. I do not like "<<-", but that is how it works.


Version: 0.6 [2003-11-25]
o Created an readMat() that can read both MAT v4 and MAT v5 files.
  The MAT v4 reader was kindly provided by Andy Jacobson at the
  Princeton University. 
o writeMat() was created for consistency, but it does only support
  MAT version 5.
o Note that I have now choosen to rename readMAT() and writeMAT() 
  to readMat() and writeMat(), respectively. This is in line with
  the RCC, cf. readHtml() instead of readHTML(). If you really need
  readMAT() and writeMAT() you can easily write your own wrappers.


Version: 0.5 [2003-04-04]
o I forgot to remove some debug code that outputs information about
  the Description comment everytime a MAT file is read. Removed.


Version: 0.4 [2003-01-16]
o Now require(R.io) is loaded with the package and not when the first
  Matlab client/server method is called. The former approach was a little
  bit annoying.
o BUG FIX: The Matlab client/server implementation was broken due to 
  bugs introduced in the Java class of the R.io package. Correcting 
  these bugs made the Matlab part work again.


Version: 0.3 [2002-11-11]
o BUG FIX: readMAT() would not work because getBits() previously in
  package R.oo was removed. getBits() is now added as a local 
  function inside readMAT().
o Made all methods \keyword{internal}.


Version: 0.2 [2002-10-23]
o Upgraded to make use of Rx.oo.


Version: 0.1 [2002-09-03]
o Initial methods are readMAT() and writeMAT() for reading and
  writing Matlab MAT file structures.
o Initial class is Matlab, which provides static methods for
  communicating with running Matlab server.
o Package created.