Re: Octave-3.6.1 for Windows (VS2008/VS2010) available

[Michael Goffioul]

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 9:28 PM, Philip Nienhuis <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> 4. Do you have plans to include the java spreadsheet .jar files with your
>>> > binary package? AFAICS all of them are covered under Apache or GPL
>>> > license.
>>
>> Maybe. It depends the additional size to the installer. If it adds
>> megs to the installer, I think I'll prefer to keep it separate,
>> especially if it's not mandatory for the io package normal usage.
>
>
> Around 18 MB.

That's quite large indeed.

> For 10 % of the io functions no jars are needed. As to spreadsheet I/O (the
> remaining 90 %):
> - For .xls/.xlsx I/O the Windows package would be sufficient. If no Excel is
> installed however, some Java jars become required.
> - For .ods I/O some jars are needed.
> If the user has OpenOffice or LibreOffice installed, again no jars are
> needed - they're contained in OOo/LO itself. But: the UNO-Java/Octave
> communication is still delicate if not unstable.
>
> FYI, an overview of disk size of Java jars for the respective interfaces +
> my personal impression as developer is here:
>
> .xls:
> POI: 9 MB  (probably the best Java-based .xsl/.xlsx option, not superfast)
> JXL: 1 MB  (tricky for writing, fairly fast reading, can read Excel95)
> OXS: 2 MB  (fastest for reading, absolutely unusable for writing)
> UNO: -     (tricky, but can read ANY format OOo itself can read)
>
> .ods:
> OTK: 5 MB  (a bit of a dinosaur, works good, sometimes keeps files locked)
> JOD: 3 MB  (fast, not very versatile, but it Just Works)
> UNO: -  see above. UNO is fairly inefficient for small files, for large ones
> (> 10 MB) it becomes indispensable.

Looking at it, it seems there's no good solution, exception having
Excel installed and using the COM interface... :)
I could add support for each type of file, but I'm not gonna add all
of them. So what would be your advised solution?

>>> 6. Gnuplot pictures are different (incomplete; e.g., no text) compared to
>>> fltk ones.
>>
>>
>> Not sure I understand this one. Do you have an example?
>
>
> See attached pics.

OK, I see. I think I forgot to recompile the pango library under
VS2010, after fixing that issue. If that's possible for you, could you
try the VS2008 version? This one shouldn't have that problem.

Michael.