Re: Merging in the gui branch

[Ben Abbott]

On Jan 19, 2012, at 1:32 PM, Jacob Dawid wrote:

> ---------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht ----------
> Von: Jacob Dawid <address@hidden>
> Datum: 19. Januar 2012 17:01
> Betreff: Re: Merging in the gui branch
> An: address@hidden
> 
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I'd like to clarify a few things:
>  
> * Remove the IRC client.  There are plenty of IRC clients around and
>    I see no need to have one built in to Octave.  We don't need to
>    add this extra code that we have to maintain.
> 
> The idea is to make Octave a community thing, ie. create the possibility to 
> directly ask and communicate with other users. My thoughts for this step 
> were, that a newcomer (maybe someone who is not even familiar with IRC) will 
> not actively search a client and the IRC channel. IRC is pretty outdated 
> among young people.
> 
>  * Using the terminal and reading the documentation should be
>    possible at the same time.  The current tabbed interface does not
>    seem to allow this way of working.
> 
> There were several complaints about that and this is definately possible. The 
> view is a tab/MDI composite view, that means you can organize it in tabs or 
> in floating windows as you wish.
> 
>  * Reading the documentation should not require a network
>    connection.  I also don't think we need to build a web browser
>    into Octave itself.  Similar to the IRC client issue, there are
>    plenty of web browsers to choose from.  We don't need to have
>    another one and embed it in Octave.  There's no need for us to add
>    this extra code that we have to maintain.
> 
> I didn't write a web browser. The rendering code is all WebKit which comes 
> with Qt anyways, so there is just a few lines of glue code that I put in to 
> make it work.
>  
>  * I noticed some redisplay problems when trying to use keyboard
>    commands for navigating the history.  For example, using C-p to
>    retrieve previous history items garbled the display.
> 
> The terminal is not working properly, I know that. I made a mistake with that 
> and I didn't have the time to make it undone again.
> 
>  * If we are going with Qt for the GUI, then we need to use Qt for
>    the graphics windows instead of FLTK.
> 
> I fully agree. Qt has the QGLWidget, which offers a simple way of using 
> OpenGL code directly in QWidgets. 
> 
>  * The code must be integrated with the current sources and build
>    system.  The GUI will be part of Octave, not a separate program,
>    and it must be possible to build it in a separate directory tree
>    as is usual with the GNU build system.
> 
> Well, I agree as long as I do not have to perform this task, which probably 
> will not be that easy at all.

fwiw, I like the idea of an integrated documentation browser ... provided it 
only requires minimal resources (referring to both the development team, and my 
computer).

I'm not pleased with any of the IRC clients I've used on my Mac. So I'm open to 
that as well. I'll have to play it the integrated one a bit to see if it meets 
my needs.

To do that I need to know how to adjust to fontsizes for gui. At the present 
the size is so small I can barely make out the text . Actually, I'm speaking of 
my experience from several weeks back. Perhaps things have improved ?  I'll 
give it a try later.

Jacob,

Will we have to maintain the IRC sources, or are they part of Qt (or something 
else) ?

Ben