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

[Bradley Kennedy]

> On 2018-03-13, at 16:42, Mike Miller <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> 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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> ————————————————————


I agree, with most of these reasons.

A lot of my biases for this issue are related to the issue that 4.2.1 GUI seems 
to crash a lot on Mac which is my daily driver laptop. This change would also 
be inline with other interactive languages, python, R...

Bradley Kennedy
address@hidden