Re: Contributing to Octave help function.

[Ben Abbott]

On Jul 21, 2012, at 3:19 AM, Sergey Dudoladov wrote:

> 
> 
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Michael D Godfrey <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 07/19/2012 09:02 AM, Sergey Dudoladov wrote:
>>   Any feedback  is welcome. In particular, I have two questions
>>   1) Is it possible to do it using m-scripts only?  I currently don't know C 
>> or C++.
> help is an m file, so that is a place to start.  In Octave type which help.
> 
>>   2) Is there any detailed description of a code contribution workflow ( 
>> besides contributors guide ) I can follow ?
> Here is a start:
> To report a new bug go to
> 
> http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=additem&group=octave
> 
> 
> If you have a patch to fix it, you should create a changeset. See
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Basics-of-Generating-a-Changeset.html#Basics-of-Generating-a-Changeset
> 
> 
> 
> It is a good idea to enter this as a bug.  This way it will get attention.  
> Most (but not all) incompatibilities
> with Matlab can be considered as bugs.
> 
> 
>>       I interested in things like "When and how often to build sources ?", 
>> "What things should be changed in configuration files when I change a 
>> function?" etc.
> Octave is under quite active development.  You will get the idea soon.  Look 
> around the Octave web page
> and wiki.
> 
> Thanks for your interest.
>  mdg
> 
> 
> 
>  I've just had a look at help.m file.   It can list all operators, functions 
> and keywords with the command "help --list"
>  However, the output of this command is rather big.
> 
>  I suggest I add four more options, namely --operators , --keywords, 
> --builtins and --functions, abbreviated as -o,  -k ,  -b and -f  
> respectively. For instance, invoking   "help -k" or "help --keywords" will 
> show keywords in the format similar to "help --list"       I  will also give 
> "help --list"  its own shortcut "help -l" 
> 
> Any comments before I start coding ?

For abbreviations, please allow any incomplete but unique  options. For 
example, "-o", "-op", "-operat", etc.   There is more than one way to do that, 
but I tend to favor the using the function strncmpi().

Ben