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Welcome to Scilab 6.0.0

Scilab 6.0 is a major new release of Scilab, the open source platform for numerical computation.

What's new

New language, new core & new Xcos

This release includes a major rewrite of Scilab's internal core, for better usability and performance: the changes to the visible aspects of the software are limited.

The first big internal change, is a complete new language parser and interpreter, with the following changes:

The language changes are not all backward compatible. You will have to update your scripts/programs/modules, but it will be very simple in pretty much all cases. In particular, the following changes may require modifications to existing code:

The second big internal change, is the ability to manipulate bigger data sets, without exhausting system resources. This includes in particular:

Xcos - the graphical tool for dynamic systems modeling and simulation - also uses the new re-written Scilab engine, and is now running in native code, which should provide much better performance as well as support for much bigger models. Xcos can load and run models created with earlier versions of Scilab.

Utilities for code productivity

This release includes also several features to write better and more efficient Scilab scripts:

Newsfeed

A new view is available in the visual environment of Scilab: the "Newsfeed". It provides a continuous feed of news, tips, and general communication from the community and from the Scilab Team. This is technical and or/professional information, about usage of Scilab, help for specific features, usage examples... We may include some professional information from the Scilab Team, only information directly useful to the user. We see it as way to create an open line of communication with (and between) the users.

Licensing changes

Scilab is now released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) v2.0, which you can find in the COPYING file at the root folder of this distribution. Prior to this version, Scilab was licensed under the terms of the CeCILL v2.1, and continues to be available under such terms, which you can find in the same COPYING file. This change has been made pursuant to article 3.5.4 of the CeCILL v2.1.

In this version, the Intel Math Kernel Library and the FFTW library optimized by Intel Math Kernel Library are included in Scilab. They are subject to the Intel EULA.

Platform-specific limitations

All functionalities of Scilab are present on all platforms, with a few exceptions:

Complete changelog

For a precise list of changes (in particular, bug fixes) between the 5.5.2 release and this one, please see the CHANGES file.



Documentations and help

If you are new to Scilab, please use the Scilab beginners tutorial and Xcos beginners tutorial provided by the Scilab Team.

The Scilab Team provides also some documentation and tutorials.




Other resources

Scilab Homepage - Consult Scilab official website

Wiki - Consult documentations, tricks, etc.

Bug Tracker - Report bugs and wishes about Scilab

Forge - Browse and publish Scilab modules

Mailing Lists - Communicate and exchange with the community

ATOMS - Browse Scilab packaged modules

File Exchange - Exchange your scripts, results and files.

Scilab.io - Use cases, tutorials and professional services.