Re: Comfortable Octave usage on Windows

[Joshua Stults]

Hello,

I had a similar experience leading a small team of (older) engineers.
When I first introduced Octave I got the 'oh noes it looks like teh
DOS' initial reaction, but they soon realized what a powerful tool it
was.  We used it to automate some really tedious data processing /
analysis tasks that they were doing in Excel (talk about inefficient
and error-prone).  Having a good syntax highlighting text editor
(SciTE) was certainly crucial to us as Octave became a significant
part of our work-flow for one particular customer.

That's the good part of the story; I've since moved on to a different
job, but I keep in touch.  I recently found out that little team was
so enamoured of all the neat stuff they could do in Octave that they
went and bought Matlab licenses!  I asked them why and they told me
they had a lot of trouble getting Octave (in windows) to produce
quality looking graphics for reports and presentations.  That might
seem like a small thing, but when you are getting your management-type
non-technical boss to make decisions/spend money/cut metal based on
your results and analysis, looking nice and professional is more than
a 'nice-to-have'.

If I had still been there I would have told them to ask the help list,
so I'll ask belatedly: what's the recommended method of producing nice
looking graphics from Octave in windows?  When I left I think they
were using something like:

>> print("foo.jpg", "-djpg")

Those ended up looking really 'jaggy' when pasted into documents or
slides, and I also seem to remember we had a lot of trouble with
finding the fonts so the axis labels saved properly.  We used the
windows installer from octave-forge.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Josh



On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 11:35 PM, maiky76 <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have been using Qtoctave for one month and I love it. Let me share my 2c
> experience.
>
> At my job I extensively use Matlab. I have been lobbying for a while to have
> more people using proper scientific software for data processing (quality
> department) to improve our own standard for production tracking. Basically
> my goal was to enable technician to process some data by themselves. I
> always had been told that Matlab was too expensive to make simple tasks such
> as standard deviation, normal distribution fitting (Excel makes people sick;
> I am talking about technicians not R&D engineers). I tried to introduce
> Octave for windows and people told me that the “Graveyard black windows”
> didn’t appeal to them and it was too complex to use it. Since I showed them
> Qtoctave, everyone is using it, liking it very much and people are modifying
> (improving) the tools I first gave them to better fit their own needs. It is
> exactly what I wanted everyone it happy and the job is better done and it’s
> only thanks to the GUI.
>
> To my opinion (and I share it), for what I wanted to do the GUI is not
> optional. I am too young to have used DOS as OS but I can’t help thinking
> that computers wouldn’t have been so wide spread without Windows, another
> GUI.
> Another example: Linux, it’s only since GUI based distro that main retail
> channel put it in their computer (Asus EEEPC) as a credible Windows
> alternative.
>
> As a professional I’d rather give money to the Qtoctave guy than the octave
> guy it’s unfair but makes more sense as to me: no GUI no Octave (whatever
> the shell paint job or the speed it can achieve and I don’t really care
> about the engine as long as it makes things moving forward).
>
> Now you can think whatever you want about this example: it could a case in
> point against a GUI as I am negating a large part of what octave is standing
> for but it is a different point of view.
>
> Btw, Scilab any one?
>
> It's my first post here
> Cheers
> Mickael Lefebvre, MEng, MSc.
> Acoustic team leader
>
> --
> View this message in context: 
> http://www.nabble.com/Comfortable-Octave-usage-on-Windows-tp23256431p23308388.html
> Sent from the Octave - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>



--
Joshua Stults
Website: http://j-stults.blogspot.com