Nelson Files

1.15.0 - (2025-11-21)

Starting with v1.15, Nelson for Windows is officially signed with a Certum-issued code-signing certificate. This is a major security milestone, ensuring the authenticity and integrity of Nelson’s Windows releases.

Nelson remains a non-profit, community-driven project. The certificate represents a significant cost for a volunteer effort - any donation to help cover it is deeply appreciated.

Added

• Pair Name/Value argument syntax for plotting (e.g. plot(x, y, '--rs', LineWidth=2, MarkerEdgeColor='k')).
• Support for ignored outputs in assignments (e.g. [~, V, ~] = svd(A)).
• New random engines: simdTwister, combRecursive, philox, threefry.
• randi: uniform random integers.
• sprand, sprandn: sparse random matrices (uniform and normal).
• mink, maxk: k smallest / largest elements.
• subspace: angle/distance between column spaces.
• std: standard deviation.
• findpeaks: local maxima detection.
• downsample: integer-factor resampling.
• imresize: image resizing (scale or target size).
• clabel: contour labeling.
• Extended colormap placement locations: north, south, east, west and their outside variants.
• Variable Editor: redesigned UI with improved performance, structured/table/array support and copy-paste compatibility with common spreadsheet apps.
• Continuation prompt: context-aware interactive prompts.
• missing: create missing values for arrays and tables.
• renameStructField: rename structure fields.
• convertStringToCharArgs: convert string/cell-of-strings to char-args.
• jsondecode(..., '-file'): decode JSON directly from a file.
• tdigest: t-digest quantile estimation.
• pascal and gallery helper matrices.
• crc32 builtin: compute CRC32 of file/string.
• markdown: output mode option (secure | advanced).
• fwrite: also return written byte count as a second output.
• loadenv: load environment variables from .env or text files.
• help: function help available in Command Window.
• consolebox: show/hide Windows terminal for Nelson session.
• CI / platform additions: macOS Tahoe 26, Fedora 43, Python 3.14, Visual Studio 2026 support.

Changed

• svd: optimized for multithreading and large matrices.
• Help framework: reworked for performance and maintainability (multithreaded builds, improved search, unified stylesheet, XSLT, LaTeX formula support, French translations, removed Qt help dependency, secure links).
• jsondecode: integrated simdjson for faster parsing.
• fileread: improved performance for large files.
• fwrite: returns character count for character data.
• i18nExtractor, browser variable and other internals: refactored for speed and reliability.
• Third-party library updates on Windows (HDF5, zlib, matio) and Qt upgraded to 6.10.0 (Win x64).
• Benchmarks and xmldocchecker: updated/improved.
• External packages: installing a package switches to local embedded help; packages must be rebuilt for the new help format.
• Removed several Boost dependencies to simplify builds.
• Private functions no longer appear in autocompletion.
• GitHub CI: MacOS Ventura replaced by MacOS 15 Intel.
• Markdown renderer switched to cmark.
• #1458 Optional support for Eigen 5.0.0 when detected.
• #1465 Test file renaming to bug_github_issue_XXX.

Fixed

• ans variable: created only for expressions.
• jsondecode: fixed parsing of arrays that contain empty arrays.
• fwrite: fixed behavior when precision is unspecified.
• eye: handled no-argument call correctly.
• #2 Sparse type insertion & extraction extended and corrected.
• Julia engine: compatibility with Julia 1.12.0