From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Fri Dec  8 11:17:14 2000
Subject: Re: The future of Octave
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: David Doolin <doolin at cs dot utk dot edu>
Cc: Kevin Straight <stra9456 at uidaho dot edu>, help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 11:11:34 -0600

On  8-Dec-2000, David Doolin <doolin at cs dot utk dot edu> wrote:

| 3. Operating systems are yesterdays technology.  While I prefer command
| line interfaces, I do not know anyone in my field (geotechnical
| engineering) who are similarly inclined.  So further developement should
| enfold rational gui interfaces as well.  Anyone who would insist on
| sneering at gui's I would invite to write one.  It's harder than you
| think.  Way harder.  Very challenging in fact.

Again, we have very limited resources.  If your goal in writing free
software is to satisfy `customers' rather than getting together with
fellow developers to create something useful for the developers, then
maybe you have the right idea here.  But I believe it will suck a lot of
resources away from the core numerical parts if you spend a lot of
time putting a fancy gui on it.

jwe



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