Re: Matlab references in docs; distinguishing between ML and Octave

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 24 March 2013 14:54, Philip Nienhuis <address@hidden> wrote:
> 1. Is there a policy about mentioning ML in the Octave docs? IMO it
> should be minimized to "only when unavoidable"; but because of
> Octave's aim for ML compatibility, references to Matlab are all over
> the place.

No, mention Matlab whenever necessary. Matlab is not Lord Voldemort,
there is nothing wrong with uttering its name. In the past we had
oblique references to Matlab, like "a competing product" or "M*tl*b"
or whatever. This is silly. Just say "Matlab" instead of He Who Must
Not Be Named.

> 2. What would be a good place in the doc for a description of how to
> distinguish between ML and Octave?

Whenever it's impossible to make Octave behave like Matlab, we
acknowledge this impossibility and make a note in the documentation.

> Dropping this info entirely or referring to the wiki seems a bit
> inappropriate to me.

The manual should not refer to the wiki, since the manual is meant to
be read offline. The wiki can and should reference the manual as much
as possible.

> I'd find it a bit double-hearted to aim to be ML-compatible while
> mentioning nowhere how to differentiate between the two in scripts
> and m-file functions.

We can't document how to tell if you're in Matlab, because that job is
for Matlab's own documentation. If that method changes, it would be
silly for our docs to go out of date. We can, however, document things
such the OCTAVE_VERSION function that probably only exist in Octave.

> 3. A way to distinguish Octave and ML, that works in both, could be to use
> the "computer" function;

There is no reason why this should be different in both. The only
reason it's different is that we haven't figured out how to make it
the same. We probably will never be able to make it the same in both,
but it's a quirk, not a design feature, that this function is
different from Matlab.

- Jordi G. H.