Re: octave vs. scilab

[Kaj Wiik]

On Thu, 16 Mar 1995, Nils Naumann wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> does anyone tried both octave and scilab and can answer some questions:

Disclaimer: These are humble opinions of a radio astronomer with very 
small amount of experiance on programming.

> Which are the advantages and disadvantages of both programs?

Advantages:

- Scilab
        Lots and lots of functions including very good ones for signal 
        processing

        Graphics and GUI is better (but not good still :))

- Octave
        Mostly written in C++ (and so has future..)
        Active and responsive mailing lists
        Aim is matlab compatibility (so that matlab is subset..)
        Reads and writes matlab binaries (I am not sure if scilab can or not?)


Disadvantages:

Scilab:
        Mostly written in F77
        Interpreter takes all available CPU time
        No dynamic allocation of memory
        Some of the manual pages are in French (well, shame on me not to 
        understand... :))

Octave:
        Needs gcc 2.6.3 to compile (this is Linux-related problem which
        will go away sooner or later when 2.6.3 is released for Linux)

        Graphics is thorugh a little antique gnuplot (which is good 
        enough for most things however..)

Kaj
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