Re: Redirecting Octave IO

[RC Crozier]

Quoting Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>:

> 2011/2/5 RC Crozier <address@hidden>:
> > Quoting Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>:
> >
> > First of all, thanks for replying.
> >
> > > > Basically I'm writing a little gui for octave.
> > >
> > > Goodness gracious, another one?
> >
> > Yes, one which will actually implement the features I want! Also just a
> > little project for myself.
>
> What features are those? Could you help us fix one of the more popular
> GUIs instead? This constant NIH with Octave IDEs/GUIs is really not
> helping. You could do a lot more good by working on, say, fixing
> QtOctave than starting another half-baked GUI that you'll get bored
> with in a few months and abandon. Maybe you'll be different from the
> dozens of other people who have decided to start a GUI or IDE for
> Octave, but the odds are not in favour of this.
>
> - Jordi G. H.

So far I have tried two GUIs, QToctave and XOctave, perhaps there are  
others I am not aware of, such as OctaveDE, which I haven't tried. The  
main problem with both of these is that they do not offer a similar  
experience to the matlab GUI . What I really want is the ability to  
certain things such as:

1. select some text in the command window, press the F9 key and have  
it sent to octave as a command.

2. select some text in an editor window, press the F9 key and have it  
sent to octave as a command.

3. have an editor window (with the above ability) with decent syntax  
highlighting (I plan to implement this with scintillaNET, a .NET  
control that wraps scintilla).

4. The ability to copy and paste text in the command window using C-c  
and C-v, not currently possible in the windows console.

5. The ability to step forward etc. when debugging by pressing one of  
the F keys

Xoctave comes closest to these abilities, but is buggy and implemented  
in Pascal, a language I am not familiar with.

QToctave is ok, but seems focussed on the visual aspect of the  
experience, such as showing the contents of variables and whatnot  
rather than these other things which I regard as the core abilities of  
the matlab GUI, and are what really speed up algorithm development for  
me in my work. I could contribute to qtoctave, but it would require  
learning the existing codebase, and many things I don't know about. By  
implementing my gui as as a .NET windows forms I have the many windows  
forms controls available to me, the extensive documentation of these  
contols, and my existing experience. It won't be cross-platform, but  
you can't have everything. I also need it work in all flavours of  
windows flawlessly. I think I can get the features I want working in a  
buggy fashion in about a week using C#.NET. I already have a few  
working.

Also, this is just for myself, I would be happy to release it for  
others, open source, especially if others would help me, but I just  
want it to do what I want really.


--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.