Re: Interesting plot behavior

[Robert T. Short]

I agree about the importance of compatibility.  I often have to deliver 
code to clients that needs to run under MATLAB, and it is much nicer if 
I don't have to make structural changes before delivery.  However, as 
Daniel said

> This isn't so.  Matlab's syntax is a subset of Octave.  There are a 
lot of things that pass in Octave (e.g., "endfunction") that Matlab 
doesn't understand.

i.e. octave is NOT compatible with MATLAB, and it always takes some work 
to get from octave to MATLAB and vice-versa.  With care, the work is 
small, but there is work.  All the the little things like "endxxx" 
(which I don't use) and the different flavors of comments (which I *do* 
use) are easily done with an awk script or some such, but plotting has 
always been the Achilles heel in the compatibility process.  
Furthermore, Daniel's statement is only half correct.  There are a lot 
of things that MATLAB has that don't exist in octave - my particular 
issue is the whole OOP facility, but MATLAB has a nice little facility 
for creating GUIs for data entry, etc.

Of course the plotting facilities have made enormous strides (even 
though I really liked the old gplot stuff) and octave continues to 
improve on a daily basis, but I don't think slavish compatibility is 
really desirable.

The question is really then, what does compatibility mean?  As any 
professional project manager will tell you, a clear statement of goals 
and objectives is critical to eventual success.  It would probably worth 
making a clear and concise statement of what we mean by "compatibility 
with MATLAB" as part of the project's overall goals.

On the other hand, I just wanted to point out a strange bit of behavior 
in case someone felt it needed attention and think I understand that 
things basically are the way they are for a reason.  Time to move forward!

Thanks for the comments and the insight.

Bob
--
Robert T. Short
PhaseLocked Systems


David Bateman wrote:
> Robert T. Short wrote:
> > So do we have to do it the same as Mathworks?  This topic has come up 
> > a few times since I have been on this list - what, exactly, does 
> > compatibility mean?
> Compatibility to me means I can share my code with others and expect 
> it to work exactly the same way if these others happen to use matlab. 
> Also and perhaps more importantly we the octave community can use the 
> vast store of user generated matlab code out there and expect it to 
> work correctly in Octave. So yes I personally consider that 
> compatibility is important.
>
> > I got around this just fine, so I don't figure this is a bug, just 
> > thought it was kind of goofy.  BTW, MATLAB scatter plots are horribly 
> > slow too (not as bad as this), but I never found a good way around 
> > it.  Also, I have an old version of MATLAB, so I could be all wet.
> I presume that matlab is horrible slow for the same reason. In fact if 
> it wasn't for the fact that all of the patches can have different 
> colors we could keep compatibility and basically combine all of the 
> patches into a single gnuplot plot command as your workaround 
> basically does. I suppose we could special case this case, but the 
> __go_draw_axes__ function is already incredibly complex..
>
> D.
>
>
> > Thanks for the response.