Re: GUI [was: Re: Possible (summer of code) projects for Octave)

[Michael Goffioul]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Søren Hauberg <address@hidden> wrote:
> From what I understood this class was able to retrieve data (such as
> variable information, etc.) from Octave, but it was not used for
> evaluating code, i.e. you cannot do
>
>  octave_server O;
>  O.eval ("for k = 1:10, disp (k); endfor");
>
> Is that correct? I was under the impression that you actually need to
> embed a terminal widget (VTK, ...) in the GUI in order to provide the
> user with some means of interaction.
>
> I would like to see member functions that would allow me to do something
> like
>
>  octave_server O;
>  bool A = O.is_complete ("k = 1;"); // returns true
>  bool B = O.is_complete ("for n = 1:10"); // returns false
>  O.eval ("k = 1");
>
> Especially the ability to determine of a line of code is complete seems
> to be of particular interest to me. Without this, it becomes really hard
> to provide a GUI that does not depend on a terminal widget.

That's actually the point. I see more benefit to use a terminal widget
in a GUI, so you can get full readline support without any effort
(completion, history, keyboard shortcuts...), you don't have to
re-invent the wheel...

It also gives you the exact look'n'feel whether you run octave in a
regular terminal or in the GUI.

Michael.