From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Sun Dec 10 12:33:35 2000
Subject: GUI (Was: The future of Octave)
From: Kevin Straight <stra9456 at uidaho dot edu>
To: Paul Kienzle <pkienzle at kienzle dot powernet dot co dot uk>
cc: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 10:33:11 -0800 (PST)

First of all, I want some clarification.  ARe we talking about a GUI on
Octave itself, or a GUI API that we can call from Octave?  I think both
would be nice to have, but the certainly aren't the same thing.

For the former, well, the people who want it should write it, but do it in
such a way that OCtave still runs fine without it.  (And I'm already
working on one solution to that, but I think others should tackle it in
their own way)

For the later, all we have to do as a group is to agree on a basic
framework, then someone needs to write bindings for some basic
widgets.  From then on, if anyone needs something complicated, they can do
it themselves.  At the minimum, we need to decide what toolkit we are
going to use.  We also need to decide some things like how we are going to
deal with signals and mainloop handling.

Heck, even someone like *me* could rough out a basic API if we could agree
on that much (not that I'm neccessarily volanterering <smile>), and I am
an indifferent programmer at best.  :-) 

On Sat, 9 Dec 2000, Paul Kienzle wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 08, 2000 at 02:49:48PM -0800, Kevin Straight wrote:
> 
> Another point about the myth of "limited resources": we are not
> interchangeable.  Those who have time do not necessarily have the
> specialized knowledge that it takes to write missing routines such as
> conjugate gradient minimization.  I spent a good hunk of time in
> the library learning enough signal processing to attempt the signal
> processing toolbox.  Sure I learned a lot in the process, but I'm not
> about to become enough of an expert in spline fitting to write a spline
> toolbox because it won't help me when I'm studying speech.  More
> particularly, I don't need sophisticated spline functions.
> 
> Given an existing GUI framework, though, and a need for some specific
> GUI feature, general programming knowledge ought to be enough for
> you to contribute something useful, especially if the appropriate
> widget already exists in the toolkit/application that we use.  Or am I
> underestimating the amount of specialized programming knowledge one
> gets with a couple of degrees in computer science ;)
> 
> > 
> <snip>
> 
> Paul Kienzle
> pkienzle at kienzle dot powernet dot co dot uk
> 

==========================
Kevin Straight
University of Idaho
www.uidaho.edu/~stra9456
==========================



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