Re: Passing variables up to the GUI

[John W. Eaton]

On 04/12/2013 09:00 PM, Daniel J Sebald wrote:

> For example, I see John just added a new feature for renaming variables
> in the workspace from the GUI workspace window. That is a nice feature.
> However, it's done via callback, when it could be done with a command
>
> "z = x; clear x;"
>
> for example.

If you send commands like this back to the interpreter, I think
Octave's behavior will seem unreliable and confusing to many users.
For example, what happens for the above command sequence if there is a
a variable called "clear" in the top-level workspace?  Users will
expect the buttons on the GUI to always work.  Telling them, "if you
want the GUI to work correctly, then don't define variables with the
same names as the Octave commands that the GUI uses" doesn't seem very
good to me.

jwe