Re: restructuring load-save

[Thorsten Meyer]

Hello there,

> octave-ascii
>
>           Freeze this one as it is now so we don't have to support
>           two different native file types for Octave.  Eventually
>           this could be deprecated and removed.
>

please do not "eventually remove" the octave-ascii format from octave. I 
have been using it extensively as a target format for awk and (later) 
perl conversion filters to import data from all kinds of proprietary 
measurement and simulation software into octave.
The simple ascii format of matlab is not nearly as useful because it 
does only allow for one (matrix) variable. I really like the level of 
complexity that the octave ascii format provides.
Also, I don't really like the idea of having to deal with a complex (and 
general purpose) binary library to get data from different (ascii) 
sources into octave.
Another points for ascii formats:
if I have an ascii data file (especially one with such a clear and 
simple structure as octave-ascii) everybody can read it and use the data 
even if he knows nothing about octave (or hasn't got octave available).

Thorsten