Re: Release plans for the GUI

[John Swensen]

On Sep 5, 2011, at 1:00 AM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:

> == Windows ==
> 
> I've brought up this issue before and Jacob seems to have begun to
> tackle it, but it's still present. Jacob's original implementation of
> a terminal used ptys which cannot easily be ported into Windows. As a
> result, Jacob has started a new implementation of the terminal which
> seemingly is minimally functional. However, we need confirmation that
> this can be built on Windows. Jacob attempted it, but it appeared to
> be a very difficult task, and he seems to have given up on this
> attempt. It would be helpful if someone who builds on Windows can help
> us build the GUI there too. Like the rest of Octave, we have a big
> need for building and testing on Windows.
> 
> As I understand it, we have confirmed Mac OS X builds, so that's not
> an immediate problem.
> 
> That's the overall situation as I see it. I really would like to see
> everyone taking the GUI seriously. I know almost all people working on
> Octave development, myself included, see little value in a GUI, but I
> think this is one major step towards having more people taking Octave
> seriously and not just a Matlab clone of mediocre quality for when you
> can't afford to pay for a Matlab license. I think there's real
> potential here to offer an immediate forward-facing improvement over
> Matlab's own GUI without any real need to copy their interface and
> make Octave shine on its own.
> 
> Opinions, please?

Regardless of how the "terminal component" of the GUI is implemented, it should 
act identical to the GUI-less CLI.  That was the one benefit of pty's on all 
the *NIX-y platforms.  I understand this is problematic for Windows, but 
shouldn't this be something that can be abstracted away so the *NIX-y solution 
is to use an extract of the tried and true KDE/Konsole sources (which we get 
bugfixes for free from those communities) and the Windows solution be whatever 
is appropriate (using the Console2 solution that has been previously discussed)?

Windows is a separate beast from the *NIX-y platforms and should be treated as 
such.  I don't think there needs to be a catch-all solution for all platforms 
for the tricky problem of terminal emulation.  My only concern with trying to 
eliminate PTYs from the picture is that I think in the long run the code will 
eventually turn into a PTY implementation to handle all the current features of 
the Octave command line interface (e.g. I use CTRL-A, CTRL-K, etc, etc for 
editing from the command line).

I know I haven't had time to contribute much lately, but that doesn't mean I 
don't have an opinion ;)

John Swensen