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Re: Octave workshop for Octave 3.0.0 on windows Xp


From: Jonathan Stickel
Subject: Re: Octave workshop for Octave 3.0.0 on windows Xp
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:03:04 -0600
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (Macintosh/20080213)


On 3/28/08 address@hidden wrote:
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:11:26 +0100
From: S?ren Hauberg <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: Octave workshop for Octave 3.0.0 on windows Xp
To: "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden>
Cc: address@hidden
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15

fre, 28 03 2008 kl. 13:37 -0400, skrev John W. Eaton:
> Other than the font and color scheme, what is so different about
> typing commands at the Octave prompt compared to typing commands at
> the Matlab prompt, except that the Matlab command window has a lot of
> other goop surrounding it?  Or do you not type at the Matlab prompt in
> the Matlab command window when you use Matlab?  If you don't type
> commands at the Matlab prompt, then how do you get anything done?
> > It seems that many people are disappointed in some way because Octave
> doesn't have a GUI.  But I just don't see that Matlab's GUI interface
> is all that useful, so it would be helpful to understand what it
> provides that is so essential.
Whenever I'm forced to use Matlab, the first thing I do is to disable
the GUI. It's unstable, slow, and takes up way too much screen space.
That being said, I see a couple of nice features in the GUI:

1) When you view the help text of a function, Matlab underlines the
functions in the see-also-list. The functions listed can then be clicked
on with the mouse, and their help text is shown. This sometimes (not
often, though) makes it faster to find the function you're looking for.

2) The Matlab documentation browser is much nicer than the Gnu Info
browser. Personally, I mostly use the Octave-Forge web pages when
reading documentation, because I think it's a much nicer solution than
the Info browser.

3) The graphical debugger in the editor looks kinda nice. I've never
used it, but a friend of mine just loves it.

But the general interface is very similar to the Octave interface. If
Octave ever gets a GUI, I would hope it would be more inspired by the
Maple interface. Back in ye olde days, when I used Maple, I really found
it helpful. It's much better for repeating (or correcting) multi-line
input.


Back when I used Matlab, I remember using the variable space window and the previous command window. Of course these are easily accessible in Octave with "whos -v" and "history -q N", but I found it nice to always have that information directly in front of me without typing a command.

I think some people also like that the Matlab figures can be edited with the mouse-clicks and pull-down menus.

Jonathan


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