Re: Implementation of importdata belonging to Octave Core or Octave-Forge?

[Philip Nienhuis]

bpabbott wrote
> On Oct 20, 2012, at 10:49 AM, Philip Nienhuis wrote:
> 
>> While perusing importdata.m in the log, I saw that it includes an error
>> message for WK1 and other spreadsheet file formats.
>> 
>> While there is no WK1 support in core Octave (nor for any other
>> spreadsheet
>> format, for that matter) there is in the Octave-Forge io package. Using
>> that
>> and e.g. LibreOffice one can read a plethora of file formats, not just
>> .wk1/.xls/.xlsx, but also .sxc/.ods/.fods/.uods/.dbf/.html/.csv/.pxl/....
>> etc.
>> 
>> Just like in e.g. usejava.m a while ago, we stumble upon core Octave
>> functions yielding messages that ignore possibly present functionality in
>> installed (and loaded) octave-forge packages.
>> 
>> So, would it be a good idea to amend importdata.m to first check for
>> additional file format reading capabilities outside core Octave and only
>> when installed Octave-Forge packages don't have it, issue a message like:
>> 
>>  "importdata: install and load io package and dependencies for file
>> format
>> " 
> <EXTENSION>
>> ?
>> 
>> FYI, in this case the check for additional file format capability is
>> easily
>> accomplished using a try...catch around a call to
>> chk_spreadsheet_support.m
>> (from the io package); that function's output indicates what file formats
>> are supported in the io pkg.
>> 
>> So what's the opinion of other devs here as to:
>> 
>> 1. error messages about lacking functions in core that might be present
>> in
>> installed octave-forge packages?
>> 
>> 2. (before I start coding) amending importdata's capabilities?
>> 
>> Philip
> 
> 
> "1" is a bug.
> 
> Ben

I figured that as well.

I've fixed both 1 & 2
(http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/e21b21c2a20d) and while being
there also amended unimplemented.h - that could also use some updates.

Philip



--
View this message in context: 
http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Implementation-of-importdata-belonging-to-Octave-Core-or-Octave-Forge-tp4645486p4645576.html
Sent from the Octave - Maintainers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.