Re: GUI design

[Daniel J Sebald]

On 03/30/2012 09:37 AM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:

> on his source code. I think we can invite him to instead have the
> gratification of forming part of a larger community of Octave users
> and developers, to work with us, instead of against us.

I don't see how the author of GUI Octave is working against Gnuplot 
developers.  Similar to the remarks in that FSF discussion encouraging 
putting GPL license on libraries as opposed to LGPL people fall in this 
trap of casting things as one side vs. another.

The thing maintainers need to think about here is whether GUI Octave, 
even if source code were made available which I am in no way advocating, 
is any use to Octave maintainers.  GUI code is very specific to 
utilities and tools used to build the interface.  (It's probably a 
snippet of code here, a snippet of code there inside some object 
oriented member function development software.)  I raised some questions 
about multi-platform and so on.  It sounds like people have decided on a 
cross platform utility, such as Qt (although enthusiasm isn't evident). 
 If GUI Octave isn't cross-platform and using a GUI application that is 
suitable to Octave developers it is of no use...and as Michael pointed 
out, could be of negative use because it could get the discussion group 
in the role of maintaining code that will be surpassed by a 
multi-platform approach that eventually will come.

This is why I suggested a Wiki for this IDE stuff so that people can get 
a handle on what tools are being used and why (e.g., because the 
application is multi-platform, because the GUI developer is under LGPL 
license and expected to be maintained indefinitely, because the 
application has a nice way for visually laying out windows, etc.) and 
what features will eventually come.  BTW, Qt maintains a roadmap page in 
their Wiki.  I think having something to start with isn't as important 
as having the tools to work with that will serve for years to come... 
Unless the goal is to just support some Windows Octave IDE.

Dan