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Re: Starting using octave


From: acoohdb
Subject: Re: Starting using octave
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 00:52:45 -0600

You (Tomer Altman <address@hidden>) write:

>If the major source of your consternation was in tweaking the font,
>I'd say you got off rather lucky!

It's not quite as trivial as all that because the default font was one,
as I remember, that either didn't exist (in windows) or behaved in a
strange way. Not every *brand-new* user would look at some .ini (I
forget where it is) and note an odd font AND have the courage to meddle
with it before they have even started using it.

>For the ultimate Octave hacking experience, I'd recommend running it
>from within Emacs ( NT Emacs, in your case ), with Octave-Mode
>on. That will give you about as much editor as one can handle. ;-)

I'm running 98SE, not being a fan of m$. My pascal versions run in DOS,
largely because when using a PC as a process controller, I like to be in
total command. Pascal (even very early ones) shipped with a small and
simple editor that was your front end to the compiler and only later,
when one had more experience, did one contemplate more powerful third
party ones. That meant you were up and running from the off and I would
guess very few new users were even aware of the nuts and bolts going on.
I suspect many never were.

Please note that I am *NOT* being critical of what is free, and clearly
very excellent, software. What I am trying to point out is that for a
quite naive user, which may well include whole rafts of students using
it unsupported, the initial stages are not very intuitive. Rather small
changes could make it very much easier and this would increase the rate
of uptake by non-cognoscenti very substantially. Having written some
(commercial) software I do appreciate how irritating comments like this
can be given the truly vast amount of work that has been put in, and I
do apologise.


-- 
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
DEMON address no longer in use. 



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