[Pkg-octave-devel] RFS: QtOctave -- A Qt front-end to Octave

[Rafa Rodriguez Galvan]

Hi Nicolas:

> 
> Btw, my packaging has already been accepted into Debian:
> 
>      http://packages.debian.org/sid/qtoctave
> 
> and I'm fairly certain it will be included in Ubuntu's Gutsy Gibbon,
> depending on when Ubuntu grabbed the unstable Debian snapshot.

Thanks for your work. I just was trying to suggest you using the Debian
Octave Group environment (alioth project, svn for the sources, web, etc)
in order to maintain yor package. But, of course, you can do it in the
way you prefer.

> On 16/09/2007, Nicolas Pettiaux <nicolas.pettiaux at ael.be> wrote:
>> I am back working on octave and trying to use qtoctave for the
>> numerical analysis course that I am teaching.

I fully agree with your comments below. In the university where I work
(Cadiz University, Spain), some teachers are planning to use octave
in the classroom and qtOctave is the solution for that. The problem is
that qtOctave is not yet as stable as we would like. Anyway, Pedro Lucas
is doing a great job and I hope that he (and Alejandro Alvarez and the 
other upstream developers of qtOctave) will try to stabilize it in a
not far future.

On the other hand, I'm a fan of Emacs and it's my preferend environment
for octave. The problem is that it's not easy to recommend it to
teachers that that they are accustomed to use proprietary tools from the
Windows world. Thats a big obstacle for the wide using of octave (that's
the situation in my university) and, in this context, an hypotetic sable
version of qtOctave would be very important.


> I am not sure I think this is a good idea at this stage. QtOctave is
> hardly what I would call stable. It is still very buggy software, as
> you note yourself elsewhere.
> 
> I happen to be co-teaching a numerical analysis course too. The kids
> seem content enough with Emacs and Octave, once they got used to the
> whole "Linux" thing. I gave them the option to try out vim too, since
> I didn't think it was fair to impose my own religious beliefs on them,
> but they saw me use Emacs and haven't even tried vim yet, about which
> I have mixed feelings. One the one hand, yay! Emacs, but on the other,
> monoculture is usually a bad thing.
> 
> My point is this: using Emacs isn't as scary as it seems, and complete
> novices can get comfortable with it. I admit I customised it slightly
> for them by providing .emacs files that at least recognised the mouse
> wheel and highlighted syntax by default, amongst other relatively
> minor cosmetic enhancements. Like I said, they seem happy with this
> option. It would be nice if we could eventually offer novices
> QtOctave, but I think we're still far from that goal.
> 
>> Is there any dedicated mailing list related to qtoctave developpement
>> or qtoctave usage to which I could subscribe ?
> 
> Not yet. It looks like QtOctave currently is simply me and Pedro
> Lucas, the upstream developer and a few scattered users. I have a
> rather hectic schedule right now, with an MSc thesis that I must hand
> in before the end of September (!!), so I really should be
> concentrating immediately on that now. I am hoping that by the end of
> October or early November, I'll have more time to dedicate to QtOctave
> and other sidequests of mine.
> 
>> Is there a wiki related to qtoctave where I could contribute ?
> 
> Not yet.
> 
>> Wouldn't be adequate that such a wiki be included in the official
>> octave wiki to support the combined usage and developpement ?
> 
> Yes. We should contact jwe or D. Bateman or whoever about
> incorporating a QtOctave wiki with the other Octave projects.
> 
>> Unfortunately, I do not (yet) speak, and even read spanish so I can
>> hardly contribute, as a simple / advance user to the doc. But I am
>> ready, as I plan to use qtoctave, to help with my students in the
>> course of the year if I can.
> 
> The documentation is a problem right now, but I think the usability of
> QtOctave is right now even worse. For example, known bug: it segfaults
> when you close all of the open windows inside QtOctave. I did a stack
> trace in gdb, but it looks like the segfault comes from the bowels of
> Qt itself, and I'm still not comfortable enough with Qt to debug this
> correctly.
> 
> A much bigger problem was addressed in the following thread in the
> Octave developers' list:
> 
>      http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-How-to-launch-Octave-with-its-GUI---tf4203354.html#a11957592
> 
> I think this should be our priority right now for QtOctave: proper
> integration with Octave.
> 
> Cheers,
> - Jordi G. H.
> 


-- 
J. Rafael Rodríguez Galván
Director de la Oficina de Software Libre de la Universidad de Cádiz (OSLUCA)
Aulario Simón Bolívar, Glorieta Simón Bolívar S/N. 11002 (Cádiz).
Tlfn. 956 01 5121