From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Thu Dec 14 03:26:54 2000 Subject: Re: some thoughts about the future of Octave From: Paul Kienzle To: "John A. Turner" Cc: jcardoso at inescn dot pt, help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 22:33:53 +0000 On Wed, Dec 13, 2000 at 04:31:58PM -0500, John A. Turner wrote: > >>>>> "JC" == Cardoso : > > JC> John Eaton has always been concerned with both the code "quality" and > JC> the code correcteness. In my opinion, this approach has keep away from > JC> Octave many potential developers. > > I'm not sure what you mean by this, but I would hope that any potential > developers *not* concerned with code quality and correctness *continue* to > stay away from the project Correctness yes, but backed up by good tests. I wrote some test functions which allow you to incorporate demo and test code directly into Octave scripts, but haven't received any feedback on them in many months. I'm hesitant to spread them through all of my matlab compatibility functions without knowing in what form they will be incorporated into Octave itself, or indeed if they will be included at all. Code quality is much less important, at least on a function by function basis. It is easy enough to make a correct function faster and cleaner should someone have the need. Quality at a higher level is important, but that can be addressed with periodic house cleaning to make sure that the different parts of the program have clean interfaces between them. This ought to be one of the first task for Octave 2.3 should such an animal ever come into being. Anyone have the skills, the time, and the interest? Clear release goals for 2.4 would also be nice, but judging by the failure of other projects to stick with release goals, this is too much to hope for. Paul Kienzle pkienzle at kienzle dot powernet dot co dot uk ------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -------------------------------------------------------------