Re: Why not using java ?

[Oscar Marquez [GTS]]

Ted Harding write:
|>  
|>  This looks potentially very interesting. I have a few comments on the demo
|>  on the above site.
|>  

Thanks for your comments.


|>  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.

At moment this is only a test applet and is very slow.


|>  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.

I think, this is no problem to be implemented.


|>  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).

...hmmm we can think how to solve this task. If octave give us the
prepared data, then it is no problem



|>  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?

I have downloaded the java class codes on our ftp server:
   ftp://ftp.tsc.uvigo.es/pub/octave/octave-2/proposal.tar.gz
 

|>  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.

Try to get the applets from our ftp server, if you have any problem,
please, mail me about it.


|>  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?

Yes. The plot applet work fine with the appletviewer from linux, I
think on win95 too.

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

OK. I think in one Month we can say more about the communications with
octave, that is now the problem. We need to say octave, that the
standard input/output is now a socket, which communicates with the
applet.  We need the help from John Eaton to make this possible in
adequate form.

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