MATLAB r2013a on Mac OS 10.8.3 crashes when viewing documentation - matlab

(Running MATLAB 8.1.0.604 (R2013a), Mac OS 10.8.3)
When I use the doc command, for example, doc fwrite;, or when I click the "more help" item in the popup help bubble for a command, the documentation window opens, but MATLAB subsequently hangs (the spinning beachball appears). This lasts indefinitely, and I inevitably have to force quit MATLAB. This also happens when using the Publish option from the editor.
Anyone have any ideas for diagnosing this? I tried taking a process sample but I didn't see any info I could interpret, I think since it's in Java the relevant information is obfuscated behind the JVM.

See this post on MatlabCentral: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/71718 ... and more specifically this bug report which includes a "workaround." They don't suggest what could be the cause, but you might make sure that OS X is updated and that you have the latest version of Java. If you do other work with Java or with WebKit these might cause issues.

I hope you have already solved the problem. Otherwise a solution has been found, the bug resides in the Access for Assistive devices (only for version 2012b and later). If you can turn them all off from System Preferences, do that. If you can't, type this in the command window:
com.mathworks.mlwidgets.html.HtmlComponentFactory.setBrowserProperty('JxBrowser.BrowserType','Mozilla15');
From http://www.mathworks.com/support/bugreports/870843

I had the same problem with Matlab R2014a on OS 10.10.4. For me the solution involved disabling Cinch (a window management tool I had installed). This can be done by clicking on the Cinch icon in the menu bar then Disable Cinch, or from System Preferences > Security and Privacy > Accessibility (as MarcoB detailed in his answer).

More suitable as comments (but I don't have enough rep yet):
I just updated to Java 1.8.0_73 and to Safari 9.1 and the patch horchler posted no longer works.
MarcoB's command still works for fixing the crashes. But with this, no longer retina resolution in the Doc browser (so it looks ugly).

Related

Eclipse with old Sun USB Keyboard

I'm forced to work with Eclipse (3.6) now, and i would like to re-use my favorite Sun keyboard with the left function block for cut/copy/paste/undo/find/etc (can't code without it ..).
So far i got it working with about every IDE/Editor i used, but NOT with eclipse. The keybinding manager simply ignores these keys.
Any hints? Has anybody got it working? I thought it might be related to Java, but i have other Java tools that work (freemind, for example).
Thanks,
Felix.
Ok, i found a workaround by installing "autokey" and defining some rules that send -C/V/X/Y/Z to the eclipse window.
But i'm still curious why Eclipse ignores these keycodes/keysyms, especially since autokey needs to be started now (and sometimes crashes).

IE11 F12 Developer Tools on Windows 7 functionality missing/not working?

I was using IE10 on Windows 7 but it is such a buggy piece of you-know-what (hanging, crashing, etc.) that I gave up and installed IE11. It has not hung or crashed since installing. But I hate the F12 developer tools! Okay, not completely - there are some very cool new features. What I don't like is that they seem to have dropped several features that I really liked! Unless I'm just missing something... I've searched and searched on Google and Microsoft but all of the help I've found only describes the new features. Here is what I'm missing: Color picker, Ruler, and most of all, the Clear browser cache for this domain. They allege to have a Clear browser cache function, but it doesn't work! So when I make changes to my website, in particular changing graphics, the only way I can see the change is to delete all my temporary files from IE. Then I lose all of my cookies e.g. for automatically logging in to Stack Overflow! IE version 11.0.9600.16428 on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.
The color picker is still available, go to the DOM Explorer tab and there is an eye dropper on the tool bar at the top towards the left. That activates the color picker.
For the issue of serving cached files try toggling on "Always refresh from server" on the network tool (3rd option from the left). This should get you the latest changes from your server.

MATLAB help/documentation not displaying correctly

I'm having a problem with the built-in help/documentation within MATLAB 2013a (issue also present in 2012b).
Upon opening the help files the pages appear with no formatting, only plain text. Search results do appear correctly though.
I have found only one instance of someone else with this issue, on MATLAB central here. However, there are no responses to the author's question. The issue I'm having is exactly the same as described there.
I have tried removing the preference folder and relaunching MATLAB but this doesn't help.
I'm using Windows 8.1 and MATLAB 2013a.
Any help or suggestions on how to fix this would be very much appreciated.
Edit:
Thank you everyone for the feedback so far. I don't believe java to be the issue, I have the latest version installed (1.7.0_45) while MATLAB uses it's own version (1.6.0_17). Both of which co-exist on my machine.
Following horchler's thread led me to another semi-related bug report here. The following code is listed at the bottom of the workaround (the script attached to the workaround didn't fix anything unfortunately).
com.mathworks.mlwidgets.html.HtmlComponentFactory.setDefaultType('HTMLRENDERER');
This results in a degraded appearance of documentation pages and loss of some functionality but is still an improvement over the plain text and scrambled pages.
Hopefully from this new information we can work towards a solution!
One solution is to go back to IE-10, or to use the patch on http://www.mathworks.com/support/bugreports/989850
Which basically replaces the localnav.js at <MATLAB>/help/includes/product/scripts
The link to download!
This is an old post, but I had the same issue and have a fix (not downloading R2013b or java related). Just downgrade from IE 11 to 10: Go to System (or System & Security)->Windows Update->View Update History->Installed Updates -> Find IE11 and uninstall it. Your system should revert back to the prior installed version. This fixed the help issues.
The problem is related to Internet Explorer 11, which MATLAB uses to render its help files. I was experiencing this problem in Windows 7 and rolling back to IE 10 fixed it right up. Unfortunately, that's not an option with Windows 8.

Minimize floating windows in NetBeans 7.2

I recently upgraded to NetBeans 7.2 and am facing a substantial usability issue with floating windows. In 7.1 each floating window was minimize-able, which I used quite regularly. By all appearances the minimize button is completely gone. The button is missing and when I right click on the title bar, the close button is available but the minimize is disabled (greyed out).
I'm running windows 7 x64.
I also encountered the issue in the RC but figured that it would be resolve in the final version. I've googled around and not been able to find anyone with the same issue so I'm hoping that it is just me.
I checked out the settings under Tools > Options > Miscellaneous > Windows and none of them seem to make any difference.
How can I get the minimize floating windows functionality back?
It looks like a bug on the windows version, because I'm using the mac one and the minimize buttons are in place.
I'd go back to the previous version until they solve the bug.
In fact, at least in mac, you can have both versions installed, so you could open 7.2 from time to time and check for any updates that solved the problem.
I've found some additional info here:
https://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=216019
Maybe you could try to do as they tell:
No minimize button means those windows are docked into editor docking spot. Use
menu Window - Reset Windows.
I am able to minimize windows in netbeans on win 7x64
And sorry I wanted to add this as a comment, but apparently I couldn't

Eclipse PyDev completion hangs (yet again)

I'm using PyDev in Eclipse as my Python editor. It's fine in terms of feature set. Everything works fine except for one very annoying thing:
Code completion itself works fast. When I press Alt+Space, the window pops out almost instantly and all the options are there. The option at the top is selected. Then comes the trouble. The detailed description won't appear until about 5-10 seconds. All this time CPU is working at maximum load and the interface is not responding. All the processor is consumed by the Eclipse Java process (the spawned Python process seems idle). Then a yellow window pops up, and all it contains is just a Python code of a selected function/variable. All consecutive details are displayed instantly. The procedure repeats when I close the completion window (for example by accepting one of the options and asking for completion again). This drives me crazy.
I've tried so far:
creating a whole new workspace,
creating an Eclipse/PyDev project from scratch,
tweaking JVM to make sure it has loads of memory,
making sure the right JVM is chosen (the latest Oracle JVM available),
making sure Python process communicates freely with the Java instance (I read about possible problems with that, but it seems not to be the issue).
making sure all the installed plugins are up to date.
The version I use is Eclipse Helios, because the last time I checked certain extensions weren't yet ported to the latest one.
Has anyone observed a similar issue? Was anyone able to get around it? General ideas on how to debug it and file a sensible bug report possibly? Other things worth checking for.
Any workaround less drastic than turning completion off completly?
Thanks!
EDIT:
I've also noticed a problem with a similar popup window in HTML/CSS editor. It looked somewhat similar (a yellow window, with some text inside) and it also took ages to display. Don't really know if that is related, but could be.
EDIT(2):
Ok, No I've started with a fresh install of the newest Eclipse Indigo, without any additional plugins apart from PyDev and the issue remains. Seems like I'll have to look for a new IDE.
What version of Java are you using?
If you are on Windows 7, later versions of Java (I think 6+) will default to IPv6.
This is probably causing the problem as Python maybe wanting IPv4.
Anyway, since I had this problem I tried disabling
PyLint
Code Analysis
but it was still hanging.
Pal's answer about "ipv4 utilization" triggered my memory about another problem I had solved by "preferring" IPv4.
See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/guide/net/ipv6_guide/
What you want to do is to edit your eclipse.ini and add "-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true" in the vmargs section
-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.2.0.v20110502.jar
...
-vmargs
-...
-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
...
I no longer get hangs.
Is there any chance you can provide the code that's making that happen (and add it to a bug report see: http://pydev.org/about.html for links)?
I use PyDev daily with some very large projects and don't have that problem, so, it may be some specific construct or scenario in your code -- or maybe you just haven't given Eclipse enough memory (which would make the garbage collector work much more), in which case, take a look at: What are the best JVM settings for Eclipse? (in specific, raise your -Xmx flag, although you can probably use the other tips there too).
If you can't provide a reproducible scenario, the other choice would be getting a profiler (i.e.: YourKit java profiler has a 15 days free which would help in this case), running that use-case in the profiler and passing a snapshot of what's happening in this situation (if that's the case, please open a bug report at pydev.org and I can help you there).
I got this from pydev.org FAQs and it works fine for me.
When I do a code-completion, PyDev hangs, what can I do?
PyDev does most of its things in the java side, but some information can only be gotten from the python side (mainly builtins), so, in order to get that info, PyDev creates a shell and communicates with it through sockets.
The main problems when that happens are:
There's a firewall blocking the communication to the shell
In Linux, some kernels do not allow ipv4 utilization, which may make PyDev fail.
To enable it, do: echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/bindv6only
The timeout to connect is too smal.
It depends upon the "Timeout to connect to shell" in the code-completion preferences (window > preferences > PyDev > Code completion)
If nothing works, please report a bug (also, check if there is anything on the error log (window > show view > PDE Runtime > Error log) and on the eclipse '.log', which is located at the .metadata folder of the workspace location.