Re: Please criticise my Octave review

[David Bateman]

Jordi Gutierrez Hermoso wrote:
> Under my nom-de-guerre Swap, I have written for Everything2 a review of 
> Octave:
>
>      http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=GNU%20Octave
>
> Never mind the style, which is fairly standard for e2 (we're supposed
> to make writeups on e2 slightly tongue-in-cheek), but I'm wondering if
> there is something about the technical non-subjective parts of my
> review that needs to be corrected. There probably is something, and if
> anyone wants to offer criticism on the things I have said there about
> Octave, its users, or its developers please do so. It is not entirely
> impossible that a Google search on Octave could turn up this review,
> so I'm a little concerned with how it will look to the world at large.
>
> Thanks for your attention,
> - Jordi G. H. (Swap)
> _______________________________________________
> Help-octave mailing list
> address@hidden
> https://www.cae.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/help-octave
>
>   
<quote>
Octave always has two versions readily available, the /stable/ (but
outdated) and the /development/ branch. Currently, these are versions
2.1.73 and 2.9.10 respectively.
</quote>

Should read

<quote>
Octave has three versions readily available, the /stable/ (but
outdated), the testing (or recommended version) and the /development/
branch. Currently, these are versions 2.0.17, 2.1.73 and 2.9.10
respectively.
</quote>

A Simulink like package, that uses octave and R as the compute engine is
available at www.scicraft.org, so your statement about absence of
anything like simulink is not strictly correct.. When you talk about
Octave extensions you might want to also say something like

<quote>
Octave can treat the output of functions as operators like any other
object and index them directly. Therefore, something like
"sin(x)(2:end)" or "(a+b)(1:10)" are perfectly valid in Octave, but not
in matlab
</quote>

When you talk about graphics you might like to mention that 2.9.10
introduced Matlab compatible graphic handles, and so perhaps many of the
issues with octave graphics are a thing of the past

Regards
David



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