looking for comments on porting code

[Mostyn Bramley-Moore]

Hello, 

I'm investigating the possibility of porting the SPM99 Matlab code
(http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/spm99.html) to Octave.  SPM99 is a
research tool "used to test hypotheses about [neuro]imaging data".  It is
distributed under the GPL, however Matlab obviously is not.  We would like
use this in another environment, possibly Octave, which is free.  

I imagine that the major work would be in implementing 3D arrays (last I
was aware, Octave didn't support greater than 2D arrays), and the GUI
features of Matlab 5.2 which are used.  

The actual work would be done by a small team of software engineering
students, over the course of a year.  

Do people here think that this would be a worthwhile project?  Is anybody
working on some of this already?  Would this be too hard for a group of
5-6 third year software engineering students?  Is Octave a good
environment to port to/is there anything else that would be a better
choice?  

Thanks, 

Mostyn Bramley-Moore.
-- 
address@hidden



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