Re: Why not using java ?

[Ted Harding]

( Re Message From: Oscar Marquez [GTS] )
> 
> Hi!
> 
> We make some experiencies programming 
> with java and we have a modest proposal 
> for octave's front-end and plotter solution
> 
> You can find it at 
> http://www.tsc.uvigo.es/~omarquez/octave/
> 
> There are only ideas to discussion. I know,
> java is to slow, but have many advantages.
> 
> 
> Oscar
> 
> -- 
> 
> Oscar W. Marquez F.           Universidad de Vigo
> address@hidden                ETSI de Telecomunicacion
> Tel. ++34-86-812 675          Lagoas-Marcosende 
> Fax. ++34-86-812 116          E-36280 Vigo - Spain

This looks potentially very interesting. I have a few comments on the demo
on the above site.

1.  The octave front-end applet (the one where only the help button works)
    didn't work at all on my Netscape: it just froze Netscape.

2.  The demo of plotting sin(x)./x was OK. I hope one can easily adjust
    thngs like line thickness and line style, etc. I like the zoom
    facility and the slide-bar for sliding the window along the graph.
    Useful for time-series work and the like. A zoom-slider (to allow a
    contuously variable zoom factor) would be a very nice addition.

4.  It must be remembered that nothing of this kind will cope with the fact
    that octave has (as yet) no built-in code for contour generation or
    for surface-plotting with hidden lines, since the code for computing
    these is not in octave but in gnuplot (or in whatever other
    contour/surface capable package one uses instead of gnuplot -- this is
    one reason why I like using PlotMTV which is rather good at these
    things).

5.  I did not manage to obtain any useful java code (maybe I muffed the
    "store" operation under netscape). Is there a URL for downloading the
    java code?

6.  I suppose that the applets will run OK 
    Also, I only managed to run the sin(x)./x plot applet once. After I
    had to restart netscape (due to above hang) I failed several times to
    reload the full applet (netscape said it could not find the plotting
    class). Maybe this is my Netscape being a bit shaky, but I'd have felt
    better about the thing if this had not happened.

7.  Re the low speed mentioned by Oscar Marquez: presumably it wold be
    possible to get higher speed by running it directly under java in
    stead of thtought Netscape?

By all appearances a promising path to follow. May we hear more, please?

Ted.                                    (address@hidden)