The error beep: Why is Mathworks ignoring an obvious, easily fixed issue

The issue is easily found by pushing the down key when in the matlab main command window.

This is not fixed by "beep off", "warning off" or any preference settings I know off. There is to my knowledge, no way to turn this off, other than turning off the system beep alltogether in your OS, or to use some third party scripts (Ingenious as they may be, am not interesting in hearing about those here).

Where is the matlab built in feature to turn this sound off?

[Andreas Goser]

Why do you think MathWorks is ignoring something? Did you report this to MathWorks Technical Support or somewhere else?

Answer 1

[Jan]

There is no builtin feature to turn this off.

This is neither a "bug" nor a "matlab beep", but a wanted feature. Instead of using third party scripts (I cannot imagine which scripts you mean here) or getting annoyed, what about not pushing the down key in the command window for a long time?

[Matt]

I scroll up in the command history to look for something. Then I scroll down quickly to get to a clear command line, and get the beep. It's not always a problem, but when, for good reason, I have the system volume up high, about the 100th beep gets jarring.

My suggestions:

- I have requested via technical support for Matlab to offer a flag to turn this beep off. It is, in my opinion, an absolutely useless audible notification. I know when I reach the bottom.

- Turning off the other beeps, like delimiter mismatching, helps. It's the accumulated effect. And I use a different text editor -- one that lets me turn off its search-not-found beep.

- That leaves the command history beep. While I am in the habit of rapidly downscrolling to clear the command line suggestion, I will try to get in the habit of using CTRL-X instead, which clears the line without a beep.

That being said ... I agree full-heartedly that Matlab should offer a preference flag to turn off this beep, and/or a simple command to go fully silent. There are days when it is quite jarring.

[Matt]

EDIT: I quickly discovered that Ctrl-X is not such a good solution. It erases whatever history line you're looking at from the history. Nice for getting a cleared command line, but bad if you wanted to keep that line in the history.

Also, the beep for failure to find a matching line in the command history ... when I give it the beginning of the line and expect it to find the rest of the line ... arguably a semi-useful audible alert -- jarring none-the-less on a bad day.

Really, I've been using this product since 1989. Often daily. Do the old man a favor. Give me a preference flag. Yes, I've submitted the request to tech support.

Answer 2

[Shashank Prasanna]

Hi Stefan, if you are unhappy about a feature or have suggestions on enhancements, MathWorks is always eager to hear about them. Make sure you contact support.

[Andreas Goser]

You can do this by phone or web.

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/2495-when-shall-i-contact-mathworks-technical-support-and-how