Re: Plotting with Octave 3.0

[Matthias Brennwald]

On 26.09.2008, at 09:27, David Bateman wrote:

> Matthias Brennwald wrote:
> > On 26.09.2008, at 00:23, address@hidden wrote:
> >
> >
> > > | It seems that
> > > | html manual at www.octave.org is outdated (but I'm not Octave
> > > | developer, just user, so I don't know why is that).
> > >
> > > Because there are many things to do and not enough users who are  
> > > also
> > > helping out as developers?
> > >
> > > jwe
> >
> > True. But I have the impression it is not obvious for most useres  
> > how  to contribute code or improved documentation in a way that  
> > will be  useful and acceptable to the 'inner circle' of Octave  
> > developers.  Maybe a short document 'Contributing to Octave for  
> > dummies' would be  useful. Or, if such a thing exists already,  
> > moving this to a  prominent place would be in order.
> >
> > Thinking of it, I might be open to contribute to the documentation  
> > a  bit. I guess the plotting stuff is one area that really needs   
> > improvement. But how do I go about this?
>
> Such a document was recently added to the manual so I suppose it  
> will end up on the website eventually. For now the raw text is at
>
> http://velveeta.che.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/hgwebdir.cgi/octave/file/ 
> a8fb37ae61b8/doc/interpreter/contrib.txi
>
> D.

Thanks, this is very useful!

As far as I can tell, though, there is hardly any information on how  
to work on the manual itself. Would it make sense to include this  
information, too?

Also, according to the document you mentioned, people are expected to  
know diff, texinfo, and mercurial. I am sure that most Octave users  
who would agree to submit their stuff are not used to working with  
these tools, so they won't submit their work. Is there a way to get  
around this? If so, this should be explained in the above document, too.

Matthias