From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Mon Dec 11 14:48:19 2000 Subject: Re: The future of Octave From: teg at redhat dot com (Trond Eivind =?iso-8859-1?q?Glomsr=d8d?=) To: =?iso-8859-1?q?Jo=c3o?= Cardoso Cc: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Date: 11 Dec 2000 15:48:14 -0500 João Cardoso writes: > 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! Sure, I'm quite happy with the text interface myself. > 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! Gtk+/GNOME is not in anyway Linux-specific, and is even backed by Sun, HP, IBM etc. There is a Gtk+ port for Windows, while I don't think there is one for Mac. > 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 (!?). Yes, but gnuplot is Octave's weakest point - it doesn't hold a candle to Matlab, which was my favorite visualization tool. In order to not write code specific to Octave, the best way is to use software components - and that means doing platform specific things (bonobo (a CORBA layer) on UNIX, OLE on Windows, on Mac) > PS- John Eaton, thanks a lot for Octave and personal support in the last > half decade! Certainly - it's a very nice piece of software. -- Trond Eivind Glomsrød Red Hat, Inc. ------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------