Re: double TABs question / QtOctave

[Levente Torok]

On Thursday 18 September 2008, John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 18-Sep-2008, Levente Torok wrote:
> 
> | Hi All,
> | 
> | 1) 
> | I have a question with reading tab keys from clipboard.
> | By copying double TABs from an external editor such as kwrite, the readline
> | eats the first non-TAB (non-whitespace) character. I think this is 
> interference with the
> | pressing double TAB key which casues octave to display a question like:
> | >
> | Display all 3876 possibilities? (y or n)
> | ---
> | Does anybody know about this issue?
> | ( I prefer using real TAB characters instead of spaces in place of TABs in 
> my editor. )
> 
> That's the way that readline works.  It has no idea where the input is
> coming from (cut and paste or your fingers on the keyboard or
> something else).

This is clear. But I guess many people would likes to copy/paste of a 
structured program.
So I vote for changing the 2xTAB to Alt+2xTAB so a copy/past can work smoothly. 
If possible.

> 
> | 2)
> | I made  teste drive with kOctave, octave workshop and QtOctave.
> | 
> | Since the development of both kOctave and octave workshop has been stopped 
> I suggest
> | to focus on QtOctave which resolved many issue that kOctave couldn't.
> | It has naturally some infant charateristics and rudimentary bugs but this 
> is the one that has got 
> | the closest to its matlab counterpart.
> | Don't you think that this project should be pushed to a state where it can 
> be octave's official GUI?
> 
> Has QtOctave changed so that interaction with Octave is at the Octave
> prompt rather than through a one-line text entry box widget thing, so
> that readline actually works properly and input/output is interspersed
> as one would normally expect, in the terminal window where one types
> input?

No. I did not change.

> I've outlined several times on this list how I think a GUI for Octave
> should be designed.  Search the lists for vte terminal.  For example,
> look at this thread:
> 
>   http://www.nabble.com/wxOctave----to11113307.html#a11113888
> 
> which has links to two others, one containing some sample code that
> shows how I think Octave should be embedded in a terminal widget.

Again. I should have checked the mail lists first. sorry.
I agree. This is not a good idea to interface a readline to another application
through an eval function. So this is mistake of QtOctave too.
However I cannot imagine how one can list the local variables an user functions
any other way.

So you are voting to John Swensen's octavede.
I'll check it, too.

> 
> What is really lacking at this point is thread safety for the Octave
> interpreter, but that can be faked if you don't mind limiting calls
> between Octave and the GUI to a few safe places.

There should be a way of displaying variables and functions through a locked
shared memory and hoping not raise a race condition.

I am also wondering if there is a way to do some sort of debugging 
( stopping, stepping one-by-one, ... ) etc.

Lev

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