Octave 4.4 Proposal: make --no-gui the default

[Mike Miller]

Maintainers,

I propose that Octave 4.4 should make the default behavior be equivalent
to "octave --no-gui".  This would run Octave as a command-line
interpreter with the Qt toolkit loaded and usable as the default
graphics toolkit.

I also propose that we add a new "--gui" option, possibly with a short
equivalent of "-G" or "-g" or both.  The option "--force-gui" would
remain as an alias for "--gui", can be deprecated and removed
eventually.

Justifications:

* The "octave" command in a terminal would appear to behave as it did in
  3.8 and prior versions of Octave.  It would actually be running as a
  Qt QApplication with full access to the Qt toolkit and runtime, just
  without the GUI.  Users who run Octave in a terminal will get
  consistent behavior, whether their environment is headless or not.

* We switched the default behavior in 4.0 to start the GUI, but that
  default behavior does not actually help most GUI users.  Most GUI
  users are going to click on a launcher that was provided by their
  distribution, and that launcher runs "octave --force-gui".  So what is
  the point of the current default?

* This would clear up the confusion around how to start the GUI.  The
  simple and clear answer would always be "octave --gui".  Today, the
  answer is "if you are in a terminal, just run octave, but if you are
  making a launcher or hitting Alt+F2, then run octave --force-gui".
  This has already been a significant source of confusion among users
  who create their own desktop launchers or menu items.

Impacts:

* This does not impact who I expect are the predominant GUI users at
  all, those who start Octave by clicking on a launcher.  The launcher
  must already use the "--force-gui" option as things stand today.

* This does not impact Windows users at all.  The octave.bat script can
  be updated to accept "--gui" for consistency.  The default behavior
  can remain the same if that makes sense for Windows users.  But that
  logic is entirely within the mxe-octave project, not octave itself.

* This *does* impact terminal users who start Octave from an interactive
  terminal session and expect to get the GUI.  These users would be able
  to get what they want with a shell alias or other simple wrapper.
  Terminal users are also more likely to know what they want and how to
  get it to work (e.g. "octave --help | grep -i gui").

* This *does* impact developers.  To test the GUI, "./run-octave --gui"
  would need to be used.

-- 
mike

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