Re: demo syntax and using dump_demos to compare to ML

[Rik]

On 01/21/2012 09:20 AM, Ben Abbott wrote:
> Rik,
>
> I noticed you replaced the "..." line continuation with "\" in the demos.
Actually, as far as I remember I was going the other way and trying to use
"..." in place of "\".  There were a lot of changes though and I might have
reversed one the other way.
> Unfortunately, this breaks the "dump_demos" script Soren wrote to compare the 
> gnuplot and fltk toolkits with Matlab (breaks the ability to run the demos 
> using Matlab).
>
> There may be some other changes the cause problems for using dump_demos to 
> produce plots, via Matlab, as well.
>
> Maybe it is a good idea to commit dump_demos.m and its companion 
> html_compare.m and add the necessary parts to configure ?
I certainly hadn't heard of this so I think other coders may also be
unaware that you are trying to preserve Matlab syntax for plot demos. 
Maybe, we could create something in to the build environment that tests
whether rundemos() passes without warnings when Octave is run under
--traditional?
> That way more of the developers will be aware these scripts are used to look 
> over the demo results, and that the plot demos need to avoid some Octave only 
> syntax to allow plots to be produces using Matlab.
How far do you want to extend this compatibility?  Do scripts under the
image directory also need to be written for Matlab compatibility?  Should
all demos that use plotting, such as treeplot in sparse/, be included?

Besides adjusting the spacing, I was also trying to get the demos to
reliably reproduce their figures.  I added "clf;" to a lot of demos that
use plotting, but that weren't in the plot/ directory where you had already
made that change.  I also discovered, using rundemos, that a lot of the
plots assume the default colormap which isn't a reliable assumption.  Thus,
I'm going to have to build another big changeset to add "colormap
('default');" to those functions where it makes a difference.  I will bring
back as much Matlab compatability as I can in that changeset.  But to which
directories, besides plot/, should it apply?

--Rik