Some newbie stuff...

[Federico Zenith]

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Hi,
I'm trying to migrate to Octave and I've read the manual provided as 
octave.dvi. I have a few questions/observations.

1- How do I exactly pass parameters to a function using fsolve() or lsode()? 
In Scilab I used something like fsolve(x0, list(f, many, parameters, 
following) ). What's the system in Octave? A sort of matlab-like varargin?

2- Reading the manual I found some mistakes/typos/things-that-could-be-better.
I thought you were using a .tex file, but I've seen now that there are 
many .texi or .txi files, written is something that looks like "plain TeX" as 
some call it. One of the things I wanted to correct was the way "H_infinity" 
is written, which in LaTeX is "$\mathcal{H}_\infty$"; however, I guess this 
won't hold in plain TeX... Is there a reason why TeX is used instead of LaTeX 
(automatic generation maybe?)?
Whom should I send patches anyway?

3- I've seen in the manual that the optimization page is totally empty! 
lpsolve() is not implemented yet, and no other function seems to exist... Is 
there anybody working on that? since I've had the misfortune of taking an 
exam in "optimization and control", and having just finished my 
"Teach-yourself-like" C++ course, I might try to help out in the optimization 
section if there's need for it. I could also use my contacts with an 
optimization professor at my university whom I can ask about where I can find 
the latest-and-greatest algorithms.

4- Has anyone ever tried to make a GUI for Octave? Using the console is very 
1337, but I've heard at least one PhD student in Germany, and not a dull one, 
saying that she tried Octave, but she could not figure out basic things as 
printing or editing files in the desktop environment (yes, could have used 
the console, but that's not very intuitive). Have there been 
discussions/projects about this?

Cheers,
- -Federico
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