Re: GUI design

[Daniel J Sebald]

On 03/23/2012 05:29 PM, Jacob Dawid wrote:
> I am a software developer and I would not develop code without an IDE. The
> point is that behind all that text you type there is a more abstract
> concept of your thoughts. If a GUI can replicate you thoughts well it is a
> lot faster than the "text only" approach. To stay with your example, a good
> gui would allow to right click on a graph that opens up a context menu in
> which you can change the color.

GUI Octave doesn't have this.


>  This is much faster than searching for the
> color definition, changing the color to blue, run the script again, seeing
> that it's not that blue that you had in mind, changing it again and so on.
>
> It all sounds like you wouldn't need it until you grasp the idea. So don't
> be so pessimistic, we know what we're doing.

When I say command line, what I mean is writing script files so that I 
may replicate.  I use gvim to write the scripts then just type the name 
of the file in Octave command line.

If I were approached by, say, an editorial review board or the FDA 
inquiring about the veracity of my work or a particular plot, I'd rather 
say I wrote script files and stored them in a dated electronic project 
record along with the original data so that I may replicate it. 
Ephemeral things just don't go over well in that case.

Also, by using script files rather than manual WYSIWYG modifications you 
may save yourself future work.  So many times I recall doing something 
similar in Octave, say, five years ago.  I go back to the M-file (which 
I can search real easy using grep, another command line tool), and oh 
yeah, that is what I want.  If I've done mods or processing in a GUI, I 
might forget.  Want to share work?  A script file works well for that. 
Otherwise, I have to describe to a coworker over the phone or email how 
to traverse the GUI.

Dan