Re: GUI design

[Richard Crozier]

On 28/03/2012 11:06, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> On 03/28/2012 04:07 AM, Richard Crozier wrote:
>> On 28/03/2012 09:55, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
>>
>

> I think what Michael and I are saying is
> 
> Nothing => Lay groundwork for GUI/IDE code that can grow => Get the ball
> rolling => When there are a reasonable amount of features on the order
> of GUI Octave, release the inaugural version => Improvements
> 

Isn't this what I proposed? I agree with Michael about the rearrangement
of windows by the way, but this already works according to Jacob. Maybe
I needed to say:

Nothing => GUI Octave feature set => GUI Octave feature set plus some of
The Mathworks feature set => Mathworks feature set =>  Improvements

As I understand it the devs are close to achieving the GUI Octave
feature set already, or have possibly exceeded them?

> And the big part is laying the groundwork because the group needs to
> decide on what GUI building utilities and technology to use across
> platforms, so on.  I assume it is across platforms because 1) Robert
> points out an IDE may be the only viable option under Windows, 2) John
> states that Octave needs to still be functional in its current
> form--implying the IDE would also be on unix-based systems.
> 

I was under the impression this was decided, i.e. Qt, which is
cross-platform.

> I know at least once John has stated "I wish I hadn't gone that route"
> with regard to plotting.  The problem is that the GUI Octave direct
> approach could be the same thing:
> 
> Nothing => GUI Octave => Dead end => Struggle to advance things for
> years => Startover => Mathworks feature set => Improvements
> 


I'm not sure I understand this, I meant to replicate the features of GUI
Octave in, say, Qt. Not the actual code implementation of GUI Octave
exactly. How would this result in a dead end? This would be extensible
to the new desired features later.

I am confused about what you are saying I think, I thought you wanted to
not produce a GUI with features the same as GUI Octave and hold off
until there were all the features you suggested implemented. Whereas I
think it better to produce something with the minimum feature set of GUI
Octave, and add further features later, as a GUI with these features is
better than nothing in my opinion.


> And again, I point out that one doesn't have to copy the look and feel
> of Mathworks or GUI Octave.  IF there are better ways of organizing and
> presenting things, that would be welcome as I see it.
> 


Sure, this is where I would see the 'Improvements' stage, but how
different can a GUI be to these examples? There's only so many ways to
organise an IDE. Most of the IDEs I have seen are very similar, e.g.
Visual Studio, QT Creator, Matlab, Eclipse, Code::Blocks etc. They're
all just collections of windows with stuff in them are they not? I'm
most interested in the debugging features, but others will have their
own priorities.

Richard





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