Igor Pro 7 New Features

Some Reasons to Upgrade to Igor Pro 7

For full details of the new features in Igor Pro 7 click here.

The following are highlights of the new features we have added to Igor Pro since version 6:

1. 64-bit architecture on both Windows and Macintosh allows increased memory usage and larger waves and datasets. (32-bit applications are still available.)
2. Igor Pro 7 uses Unicode internally, improving the rendering of mathematical symbols and foreign characters.
3. Unlimited undo/redo for all procedure code and notebook editing, and for most interactive graph and layout adjustments.
4. Support for high-resolution displays.
5. Transparent colors: You can now use partially transparent (non-opaque) colors in most places where color can be controlled, such as line and fill colors, by specifying an RGBA color value instead of an RGB color value (the A stands for alpha).
6. Error ranges on a graph can now be represented using shading.
7. Specify gradient fills for drawing elements, graph trace fills, and graph window and plot area fills using the new "gradient" keyword with the ModifyGraph, ModifyLayout, or SetDrawEnv operations.
8. View live video and capture images from supported hardware cameras.
9. Most data file manipulation functionality previously provided by XOPs is now built in:
   • XLLoadWave (loads Excel files).
   • MLLoadWave (loads Matlab MAT files, requires Matlab 2010b or later).
   • JCAMPLoadWave (loads JCAMP-DX spectroscopy data).
   • GBLoadWave (loads general binary data).
   • SoundLoadWave and SoundSaveWave (loads and saves sound files).
10. Functionality provided by the following Igor Pro 6 XOPs is now built in:
    • Gizmo
    • Data Browser
    • GetInputState
    • HFSAndPosix (Macintosh only)
11. Gizmo was completely rewritten for Igor Pro 7:
    • Gizmo windows and dialogs now function like other window types and dialogs.
    • Regular Igor annotations such as text boxes and color scales can now be added to Gizmo windows.
    • Gizmos can now also be hosted in other window types such as Graphs, Layouts, and Control Panels.
    • New Gizmo Image and 3D bar objects.
    • Numerical label text rendering has been greatly improved.
12. The Data Browser has been completely rewritten and modernized:
    • Drag waves from the Data Browser directly onto tables, graphs, and the command line.
    • Right click the header to display additional object information such as size, # of points, dimensionality, creation and modification dates, type, lock status, and symbolic path (for waves). Sort by any column by clicking that column's header.
    • Right-click on an object and select "Where Is Object Used" to bring up a dialog showing you where the object is used.
13. Page Layout improvements:
    • Page layouts can now contain multiple pages. The different pages in a layout are shown in a new page sorter that appears on the left side of the layout window.
    • Page layouts can now be displayed as a slide show for full-screen presentation of Igor graphics and results, useful for running a standalone kiosk.
14. Over 40 new built-in commands, including:
    • SplitWave, FindDuplicates, SortColumns, ListToTextWave, ListToWaveRefWave, WaveRefWaveToList, JointHistogram, SumSeries, SumDimension, FindContour, DPSS, MultiTaperPSD, ICA, URLRequest, GetEnvironmentVariable, SetEnvironmentVariable, UnsetEnvironmentVariable, LambertW, gammaEuler, sinIntegral, cosIntegral, expIntegralE1, zeta, Dilogarithm, ImageSkeleton3D, Jacobi elliptic functions JacobiSn and JacobiCn
15. Over 20 commands, including WaveStats and MatrixOp, have internal code that can automatically execute some or all calculations in multiple threads.
16. MatrixOP supports an additional 50 functions.
17. Image Processing improvements:
    • Added 14 interactive dialogs for image analysis operations, such as Particle Analysis and Line Profile.
    • Automatic multi-threading: When possible, computations are automatically done in parallel for a number of image processing operations, including ImageInterpolate, ImageLineProfile, ImageThreshold, ImageEdgeDetection, ImageRestore, ImageFilter, ImageBlend, ImageStats, and ImageRotate.
18. Most operations on text waves now execute much faster due to a (backwards compatible) implementation change of how text is stored.
19. The Debugger has been substantially improved:
    • Greatly improved Table view of waves.
    • String Inspector allows direct editing of long strings.
    • Structures and structure elements directly editable in Variables tree.
20. Procedure editing improvements:
    • You can edit Igor procedure files in an external editor. Igor monitors open text files for changes and automatically reloads the file when its contents have changed.
    • Easily find functions and other programming constructs from the new Procedure window Navigation Bar.
    • Optional Line Numbers in the margin.
    • New C-like syntax for inline function parameters
    • Line continuation.
    • <<, >>, ++, and -- operators.
    • Paste colorized procedure text into HTML-aware applications.
21. Text Searching: Search text faster using the new Find bar, available in all windows that display text. All matches to the find string are highlighted at once so it's easier to find the instance you're looking for.