FreeMat 2.0RC1 review

FreeMat is a free environment for rapid engineering and scientific prototyping and data processing.

License: GPL OS: Mac OS X File size: 0K Developer: Samit Basu Price: $0.00 Updated: 15 Mar 2006

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FreeMat is a free environment for rapid engineering and scientific prototyping and data processing. It is similar to commercial systems such as MATLAB from Mathworks, and IDL from Research Systems, but is Open Source. FreeMat includes several novel features such as a codeless interface to external C/C++/FORTRAN code, parallel/distributed algorithm development (via MPI), and plotting and visualization capabilities. FreeMat is available under an MIT-type license. Supported platforms include Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Its been nearly a year (!) since the last release of FreeMat. A new version is now ready for testing. I have elected to release it as a Release Candidate instead of a full release because of the significant changes that have been made since version 1.1.
Here are some key features of "FreeMat":
Handle-based Graphics including 3D surface plots, multiple plots per figure, and full customization of axes properties. Preliminary support for OpenGL rendering.
Support for MATLAB-style classes and object oriented programming, including operator overloading.
New GUI interface based on Qt4. FreeMat now sports a new terminal interface, a highlighting editor, and some new tools.
Speed improvements and optimizations (some loops are 10-100 times faster).
Preliminary support for reading and writing MATLAB .MAT files.
PDF output on all platforms.
New build system based on qmake.
Many new MATLAB-compatibility functions and scripts.
Native Aqua application on Mac OS X.
Linux distribution now includes a binary release that should run on several distributions.
Over 200 new pages of documentation, and an improved built in help browser.