MATLAB r2013a on Mac OS 10.8.3 crashes when viewing documentation

Question

(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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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