From owner-help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Oct 15 16:34:58 1996
Subject: Re: X Interface
From: Carl Leitner <bigcarl at email dot unc dot edu>
To: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
cc: Octave Help <help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
Date: 	Tue, 15 Oct 1996 17:34:49 -0400 (EDT)

On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, John W. Eaton wrote:

> On  7-Oct-1996, Carl Leitner <bigcarl at email dot unc dot edu> wrote:
> 
> : Does anyone know of any plans of allowing the x-interface functions in
> : matlab to work under octave.  Possibly a tcl/tk or expectk wrapper?
> 
> I have some vague ideas about adding programmable GUI features to
> Octave after 2.0.  I would prefer to make it possible for users to
> easily write their own interfaces to new toolkits so that Octave is
> not tied to any one toolkit in particular.  If anyone is interested in
> working on this, please send me some mail.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> jwe
> 


This is primarily the reason I asked.  I would be interested in working on
this.  I have some background with expect/tcl-tk, as well as the
X-interface w/ Matlab.  But before I begin doing so, I would like to
bounce some ideas around.  Here is what I am looking at:
	1) Trying to make it as close to Matlab's interface as possible
	2) Either: 
		Creating a new loading function to filter the X
		commands to expectk and the non-x to octave.
		(This could prevent people from typing in X
		commands or create incompatibilities w/ other
		versions of an  X-interface)
	   Or:
		Running any x-capable *.a files under expectk
		and piping the appropriate stuff to octave
		(This would require two binaries
			octave
		 and 	octave_tcl)

What do you see as advantages/disadvantages to any of these aproaches.  
Are there are aproaches that might be equally fit, or better?
					Carl Leitner