From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Mon Dec 11 14:33:51 2000 Subject: Re: The future of Octave From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Jo=E3o?= Cardoso To: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 20:31:36 +0000 Trond Eivind GlomsrØd wrote: > > Tcl is too slow, especially since everyone is obviously concerned about > > execution time. I say we should use C++m which Octave can already > > dynamicly load. > > > > Tcl would be indeed too slow if one wanted to use it for > > computation---but I don't think this is being contemplated. I think a > > better idea is to wrap up Tk widgets into octave wrappers; so instead > > of Tcl loop running Tk widgets you'd run Octave loop. > > Argh. TclTk can best be decribed as "evil" and "obsolete", and I think > the company who did this (Scriptics, which changed the name and was > bought) has dropped it. > > If a GUI is to be made, I think using gtk+ would be better - it's the > foundation of GNOME, GNU's desktop. If taking the next step and using > gnome, visualization could be done through bonobo. This problem has been raised several times in the mailing lists. Yes, tcl is ugly, but using Tk as a GUI is fast enought (look at http://merlin.inescn.pt/~qual/tk_octave) Yes, gtk is nicer; no, xxx is slow, ah, but yyy is promising, no ZZZ is "first principles" based! This is not the correct way. Define a generic interface and let each one use what he likes! Don't bind Octave to anything more than is just needed: using GNOME or XXX or YYY would limit users to linux (and unix is more than just linux!; and the dos/windows/mac guys?). This is also true for ploting; as is now, Octave can be used with gnuplot, even on mac, ms-windows, or amiga, or atari (!?). As I see it, TK, being multi-platform (mac, u*nix, mswin), is the ideal approach for a prototype implementation; also, the tk-perl/phyton approach could be analysed and eventually used. tcl/tk, being free soft, has no problems, as its creator/maintainer life show us: sun/scriptics/ajuba, and now something else. Joao PS- John Eaton, thanks a lot for Octave and personal support in the last half decade! Let the Force be with you! -- João Cardoso, jcard at fe dot up dot pt Gab. I-314, tel. 1888 ------------------------------------------------------------- Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL. Octave's home on the web: http://www.octave.org How to fund new projects: http://www.octave.org/funding.html Subscription information: http://www.octave.org/archive.html -------------------------------------------------------------