Below are the details of changes made for Igor Pro® 6.3 since the last revision of Igor 6.2 (6.22A).

Guide To Igor Pro 6.3 Improvements

Here we list aguably "major" improvements introduced in Igor 6.3.

(See Changes Since Igor 6.30 for a detailed bug list of changes and improvements.)

Added a Batch Curve Fitting package : allows you to fit batches of data to the built-in or user-defined fitting function of your choice. A "batch" is a collection of similar data sets stored in waves to which a common fitting function, initial conditions, and weighting and masking waves have been applied. Each data set may be stored in a waveform, an XY pair, or in the columns of a 2D wave.

Added the Scatter Dot Plot Panel . Scatter Dot Plots are one part category plot, one part scatter plot, and one part histogram. Like category plots they show total counts for multiple data sets, each labeled on the X axis. Like scatter plots they provide a sense of the data's distribution. Like histograms they sort data into bins of points in which all values fall into a range.

The Multipeak Fitting 2 package now supports constraints on peak coefficients.

NewImage supports direct RGBA color image plots.

The FilterFIR notch filter length had been limited to 4001 points. Now the limit is 2147483647 points, which makes the minimum notch width 0.000107% of the sampling frequency.

New built-in Functions and Operations

AdoptFiles
GetMouse
GetRTLocation
GetRTLocInfo
ImageFromXYZ
WaveRefIndexedDFR

New Example Experiments

• Batch Curve Fitting Demo
• Color Table Control Demo
• Fake Waterfall Demo
• Multithreaded LoadWave
• Scatter Dot Plot Panel Demo
• Thread-at-a-Time Demo

New Procedure Files

• Batch Curve Fitting procedure files
• Color Table Control Panel.ipf
• FillBetweenContours.ipf
• FunctionProfiling.ipf
• TableOfGraphsTraces.ipf

Version Compatibility

Igor Pro 6.3 can read files created by all earlier versions of Igor.

If you don't use features new in Igor Pro 6.3, then experiment files that it writes are readable by earlier versions.

Once you use features added in Igor Pro 6.3 and save an experiment file, that file may cause errors if you try to read it in an earlier version of Igor.

Changed Behaviors for Igor Pro 6.3

Improved error checking when the wrong type of wave is used in a compiled wave assignment. For example, a complex destination wave but used in a real-only assignment expression.

New procedure windows have #pragma rtGlobals=3 (instead of =1). This implements stricter wave assignment checking, which catches some kinds of user-written bugs.

Improved the error checking of single-point Waveform Arithmetic and Assignment expressions in user-defined functions, warning the user with a "P or X used outside of a wave assignment loop" message when the compiler detects code that produces unexpected results.

The New Image Plot dialog now recognizes that a 4-layer wave will be treated as direct color (now that NewImage supports alpha direct color), and shows the NewImage/G=1 checkbox.

If you try to invoke a built-in string or numeric function without printing or assigning or otherwise using its result, Igor will now tell you "To invoke a built-in function you must print or assign the result". This does not apply to user-defined functions.

In some operations, using the same flag twice is now a compile-time error. Previously it was a runtime error. This affects all XOP operations and some built-in operations.

If Debugging on Error is enabled, Igor will bring up the procedure window and highlight the offending line after the error dialog is dismissed.

ValDisplay controls whose value expressions previously caused runtime errors now simply print "<no value>"; no runtime error is raised.

Macintosh OS X 10.7+: Igor now supports the Resume feature. Note: if you disable Resume, you can still hold down the option key while launching Igor to open the most recent experiment automatically. (We like to use "RestoreMeNot" to disable Resume.)

Bug Fixes

See Changes Since Igor 6.30 for a detailed bug fix list.