openmicroscopy/bioformats — pull request #693 by sbesson (2013-09-09 10:13:22+00:00)
Title: Fix bfGetReader for MATLAB R2009a and earlier (rebased onto develop)

This is the same as gh-688 but rebased onto develop.

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Following the http://lists.openmicroscopy.org.uk/pipermail/ome-users/2013-September/003912.html and http://lists.openmicroscopy.org.uk/pipermail/ome-users/2013-September/003910.html threads, this pull request patches the `bfGetReader.m` function to allow it to be used with Matlab versions earlier than R2009b.

As a first implementation of this patch, the version check is performed using Matlab built-in `verLessThan` function available with MATLAB Version 7.4 and subsequent versions rather than using/maintaining the `versionCheck()` sub-function.

Such an implementation of the version check practically means we would drop support for versions of MATLAB earlier than 7.4 (R2007a). Consequently the typecasting workaround in `bfGetPlane` for earlier versions of Matlab than 7.1 is also dropped as part of this PR.

We may also want to expose a minimal version in the documentation page /cc @hflynn