On 03/14/2018 07:30 AM, edmund ronald
wrote:
I don't think the Unix philosophy covers that. And we've seen many applications get depreciated command line flags. Besides, most people don't automation with GUI programs. The change is quite trivial for scripts too.I understand the arguments and support the decision, but generally I believe that top-level argument defaults should remain fixed for the life of software, that is the Unix philosophy.
Because user scripts depend on the behavior.
I have hundreds of users I am supporting who run an Octave launch script.
Edmundᐧ
On Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 11:53 AM, Carnë Draug <address@hidden> wrote:
Hi MikeOn 13 March 2018 at 21:42, 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
We discussed it this morning. We all agreed this makes a lot of sense
and will simplify our input checks and want it for 4.4.
Carnë
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