Re: Function "open"

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 26 January 2012 08:50, Ismael Núñez-Riboni
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi, I don't know if this is the correct address to contribute with a
> function for octave...

This particular function, yes. If you have a contribution for
packages, the Octave-Forge sister project (http://octave.sf.net) is a
better location.

> In any case, I attached to this e-mail a simple function "open" to
> open files from the octave command prompt, similar to the matlab
> function "open" and which is (to my knowledge) missing in octave.

Unfortunately, this function doesn't do at all what the Matlab
function does, except in trivial cases. For those trivial cases, we
already have the edit function.

I don't see an easy way to implement Matlab's open function, since it
assumes so much about the surrounding environment (i.e. that it's
Windows with Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat Reader installed). I can
think of a bunch of boring ways to try to do this correctly (e.g.
using xdg-open on a GNU-based distribution). Implementing this
function correctly, however, seems to me like more trouble than it's
worth.

I'm not sure what to recommend. Thanks for the contribution, but I
don't think we can use it.

- Jordi G. H.