Re: Successfully merged projects

[John Swensen]

On Apr 11, 2011, at 12:52 PM, Richard Crozier wrote:

> 
> John W. Eaton wrote:
>> 
>> On 11-Apr-2011, Richard Crozier wrote:
>> 
>> | Just to throw in a few cents worth, I have been working on QtOctave of
>> late,
>> | and the svn sources now contain an editor with the following features:
>> | 
>> | 1. step-through debugging capabilities (i.e. opens m files as the
>> dubugger
>> | steps into them). Debug stepping is achievable using the F-keys as in
>> the
>> | matlab editor.
>> | 
>> | 2. the ability to add break points by clicking on the side bar,
>> resizeable
>> | text
>> | 
>> | 3. the ability to highlight text and send it to octave as a command by
>> | pressing F9.
>> | 
>> | 4. proper syntax highlighting which matches the matlab editor, or is
>> | modifiable
>> | 
>> | 6. Decent auto-indentation for code which matches opening code structure
>> | indentation, i.e. properly matches 'end' with opening 'if' indentation
>> etc.
>> | 
>> | 5. the ability to resize the text via keyboard shortcuts or a button.
>> | 
>> | Plus a number of other improvements, such as inserting spaces rather
>> than
>> | tabs etc. and the addition of the open-source cross-platform Inconsolata
>> | font.
>> | 
>> | 
>> | The command window also adds the ability to highlight text, press F9,
>> and
>> | have it sent as a command to octave. 
>> | 
>> | All of the communication with octave is handled by a single class
>> | octave_connection.cpp, perhaps there is some scope to merge these
>> projects
>> | by replacing the octave_connection class with the superior method used
>> in
>> | the projects under discussion? Or alternatively using the QtOctave
>> editor
>> | classes in these projects? 
>> | 
>> | Several of the features I've described above are what I consider the key
>> | features of the matlab GUI for algorithm development.
>> 
>> I have to say that I find the whole idea of each application providing
>> its own editor to be rather silly.  Why do people keep reinventing these
>> things?
>> 
>> jwe
>> 
> 
> 
> Well, without these features, I wouldn't bother with a GUI at all, what do
> you need a GUI for that you can't just use the existing terminal to do? I'm
> not interested in displaying variables and things, there are perfectly good
> commands, 'who' and 'whos' to achieve this. 
> 
> The advantage of the matlab gui is that you can step through your file,
> realise there is an error, change something earlier in the script, or
> manually change a variable value, highlight a block of code in the file and
> reevaluate, the continue without having to start from scratch, or save all
> the variables to a file, or some other method.
> 
> I think you would struggle to implement this in an external editor, but
> perhaps that's due to my lack of knowledge of what's out there. Is there one
> with which I could do this?
> 
> Richard
> 

I guess I disagree with you a little bit also.  I find that having a variables 
view is very beneficial to me.  I also find a history view useful.  I think 
this points to the fact that everyones' preferences are different about what an 
IDE should contain and that by making it modular (e.g. the dockable panels that 
Jacob and I are proposing in Quint), each individual user can use the portions 
they find are helpful to their particular workflow.

John Swensen