Re: GUI design

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

2012/3/23 Daniel J Sebald <address@hidden>:
> One question is whether people are more productive using a GUI
> versus a command line and an editor like gvim or whatever.

This is irrelevant. They want a GUI. You are not going to convince
them that they don't want a GUI. The first thing every new user does
when they install Octave is (1) look for a GUI to install or (2)
complain that there is no GUI.

> To get my support with a GUI effort, the GUI has to bring some
> feature to the table above and beyond what the command line can do.

But we don't want your support. Nor mine. The only reason we're making
a GUI is because everyone but you and me and other people who post on
this list immediately say the reason Octave sucks is because it has no
GUI.

> Whether maintainers should be supporting a GUI is another question.
> It's a lot of work.

Sure, and there also seems to be a lot of people other than you and me
who are willing to do this work. We should tell those people that what
everyone seems to like is GUI Octave, and if we are going to convince
all the people installing GUI Octave that they shouldn't be doing so,
the easiest way is to make our GUI look exactly the same.

> Just use GUI Octave developed as it's own project and contribute to
> that.

We can't contribute to it. It has no public source code and the author
doesn't want his artistic integrity tarnished by our patches (really,
he said to me as much, comparing source code to art).

- Jordi G. H.