Re: Release Plans

[Daniel J Sebald]

On 09/26/2013 01:38 PM, John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 09/26/2013 01:58 PM, Michael D. Godfrey wrote:
>
> > In my previous email I think I suggested that the GUI, as it is now,
> > should not be the
> > default, and, as Rik says, should be described as "experimental."
>
> > As part
> > of the 3.8
> > release users should be strongly encouraged to try the GUI and report
> > their experience,
> > both bugs and ease-of-use items.
>
> I'm not sure it makes sense to disable the GUI by default and then tell
> people that they should enable it and tell us what they think. People
> will just want to use it by default anyway. I expect that people who
> package Octave will just enable it by default anyway, since that is what
> the users seem to want.
>
> Also, people liked QtOctave and they have been using all sorts of other
> halfway finished GUIs for Octave for years. They are so desperate for a
> GUI that they've put up with some really bad attempts to provide one.
> They may have some complaints about the new GUI, but at least they will
> no longer be able to complain that Octave sucks because it doesn't have
> a GUI.
>
> jwe

Although I agree with Rik and Michael on software development in 
general, John was clear in April or sooner that the goal was to get 
something out the door that would satisfy users and I think the group as 
a whole resisted stretching things with too many features (e.g., 
variable editors, etc.).  The longer this goes without release, though, 
the more it detracts from that approach because it would have then made 
more sense to build a better foundation.

If there were one thing I think could use more attention before release, 
it is the debugger.  The graphical debugger is to me the biggest gain 
from the GUI at this point (especially for new users).  It's not as 
robust as it could be and as it stands there will be complaints.  It 
works fine when not changing scripts, but when in a code-development, 
file-saving mode, breakpoints sometimes get out of alignment.

Dan