Re: OtOctave for the total newbie

[Vokey, John]

I am quite happy with Octave (well, once, with the help of this list, I was 
able to use the edit command!).  It seems to do most of what I use matlab for.  
I was just looking for ways to help sell it to my colleagues.  I personally 
agree that the GUI often just gets in the way, but as with the promotion of R, 
if it weren't for GUIs such as Rcmdr, none of my SPSS-obsessed colleagues would 
even look at it.


On 2011-02-08, at 7:51 AM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:

> On 8 February 2011 00:49, Vokey, John <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> I am not surprised because undoubtedly I am supposed to do all sorts
>> of 'nix stuff to get the binary to work of which I have no idea and
>> none of the QtOctave sites seem to mention (except if I compile it
>> from sources and then what is the point of the binary?)---including
>> the site I got the binary from.
> 
> QtOctave is made by Pedro Lucas and his friends, mostly. It has its
> own mailing list. They know Windows and Ubuntu best. We might even get
> told by some Octave veteran to take up the problem with them instead
> of talking about it in this mailing list, because "QtOctave isn't
> Octave".
> 
> I understand your frustration, as it is mine as well. I don't have the
> ability to compile on Mac OS X and help you out, nor to package it for
> Fink or Macports and get it working, simply because I don't have
> convenient access to that operating system. I think I could probably
> run it in a virtual machine, but I can't even find someone to lend me
> an install CD for Mac OS X, and probably Apple would like to say
> that's piracy.
> 
> And even if you did get working QtOctave working on Mac OS X, I think
> you will be disappointed. QtOctave gets close to a good user
> experience of an Octave GUI, but not close enough to be satisfactory.
> I am quite disappointed with it, and I keep meaning to try to fix it.
> Most Octave users on Mac OS X seem happy to work without it anyways,
> and I myself only see the immediate utility of marketing to people
> like your colleagues who will think Octave is inferior because it will
> look different than Matlab.
> 
> I'm sorry that Octave isn't working for you. I honestly am. But please
> don't curse the darkness. We're doing hard work to light the candles,
> and we obviously need all the help we can. We are not producing a
> subpar product for you out of bad faith. We simply need more help.
> 
> - Jordi G. H.