Re: X Interface

[Carl Leitner]

On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, John W. Eaton wrote:

> On  7-Oct-1996, Carl Leitner <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> : Does anyone know of any plans of allowing the x-interface functions in
> : matlab to work under octave.  Possibly a tcl/tk or expectk wrapper?
> 
> I have some vague ideas about adding programmable GUI features to
> Octave after 2.0.  I would prefer to make it possible for users to
> easily write their own interfaces to new toolkits so that Octave is
> not tied to any one toolkit in particular.  If anyone is interested in
> working on this, please send me some mail.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> jwe
> 


This is primarily the reason I asked.  I would be interested in working on
this.  I have some background with expect/tcl-tk, as well as the
X-interface w/ Matlab.  But before I begin doing so, I would like to
bounce some ideas around.  Here is what I am looking at:
        1) Trying to make it as close to Matlab's interface as possible
        2) Either: 
                Creating a new loading function to filter the X
                commands to expectk and the non-x to octave.
                (This could prevent people from typing in X
                commands or create incompatibilities w/ other
                versions of an  X-interface)
           Or:
                Running any x-capable *.a files under expectk
                and piping the appropriate stuff to octave
                (This would require two binaries
                        octave
                 and    octave_tcl)

What do you see as advantages/disadvantages to any of these aproaches.  
Are there are aproaches that might be equally fit, or better?
                                        Carl Leitner