Re: Implementation of importdata belonging to Octave Core or Octave-Forge?

[Ben Abbott]

On Oct 20, 2012, at 10:49 AM, Philip Nienhuis wrote:

> While perusing importdata.m in the log, I saw that it includes an error
> message for WK1 and other spreadsheet file formats.
> 
> While there is no WK1 support in core Octave (nor for any other spreadsheet
> format, for that matter) there is in the Octave-Forge io package. Using that
> and e.g. LibreOffice one can read a plethora of file formats, not just
> .wk1/.xls/.xlsx, but also .sxc/.ods/.fods/.uods/.dbf/.html/.csv/.pxl/....
> etc.
> 
> Just like in e.g. usejava.m a while ago, we stumble upon core Octave
> functions yielding messages that ignore possibly present functionality in
> installed (and loaded) octave-forge packages.
> 
> So, would it be a good idea to amend importdata.m to first check for
> additional file format reading capabilities outside core Octave and only
> when installed Octave-Forge packages don't have it, issue a message like:
> 
>  "importdata: install and load io package and dependencies for file format
> " <EXTENSION>
> ?
> 
> FYI, in this case the check for additional file format capability is easily
> accomplished using a try...catch around a call to chk_spreadsheet_support.m
> (from the io package); that function's output indicates what file formats
> are supported in the io pkg.
> 
> So what's the opinion of other devs here as to:
> 
> 1. error messages about lacking functions in core that might be present in
> installed octave-forge packages?
> 
> 2. (before I start coding) amending importdata's capabilities?
> 
> Philip


"1" is a bug.

Ben