Re: The future of Octave

[David Doolin]

On Fri, 8 Dec 2000, John W. Eaton wrote:

> On  7-Dec-2000, David Doolin <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> | Either octave should try and maintain ("full") compatibility, or  
> | jettison the effort, burn the bridge and don't look back.
> 
> Hmm.  If you are on the side that says full compatibility is critical,
> I guess we may have a burning bridge in between us.  :-)

Lemme pour some gas on the fire ;)

> 
> | (By "full", I mean some useful core subset of the matlab language
> | and function library.  I do not mean implementing guide, 
> | simulink, etc.)  
> 
> Don't we already have some useful core subset?  And aren't people
> constantly complaining that this or that favorite feature of theirs is
> missing from Octave?  Isn't that likely to just continue to get worse
> as more people start using whatever new features are in Matlab 6 and 7
> and 8 and ...?

Perhaps.  Maybe "core" could mean "what is implemented when jwe steps
down". Or it could mean what octave has now + sparse, or + a couple of
other things.  The only way this would work is if the "core" was
explicitly and publically defined, and had one or more maintainers
willing to grunt through the parser to make it happen.

This is not to say there isn't a useful core subset right now.  There is.
But it is enough to attract new octave users?

dave d

> 
> jwe
> 



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