Re: Octave/Win32 new binary package (2.9.12)

[Michael Goffioul]

On 5/30/07, Olli Saarela <address@hidden> wrote:
> 1a) Zooming with mouse (rubberband with left button & click with right)
> seems to always operate on the last subplot, no matter which subplot
> you click. This can be tested with
> subplot(311);plot(rand(5,1));subplot(312);plot(rand(5,1));subplot(313);plot(rand(5,1))

Indeed. Mouse clicking only updates current figure; current axes is not
updated yet. The java graphics backend is still in development and there
are lot of things that do not work correctly. In the final binary package
iteration, I might decide to not put it as default backend (seems wiser).

> 1b) The edit command tries to create a new file to
> fullfile(default_home, "octave"), even though
> the directory doesn't exist
> octave.exe:32> edit new_file.m
> error: edit: could not create C:\Ojs\octave\new_file.m

This also occurs under UNIX. When creating a new file, "edit" script will
put default license statement at the beginning; hence it needs a location
to write the initial file. I guess this is something to fix in the miscellaneous
package, for instance by creating the target directory if it does not exist.

> 1c) Handling of national characters. If I have a directory named lämpötila
> (containing an a umlaut and an o umlaut), the command prompt in Console
> shows it in the Windows fashion (correct national characters):
> C:\tmp\test>dir /b
> lämpötila
> but Octave in a Console window shows it in the ms-dos style:
> octave.exe:22> dir
> .              ..             lSmp÷tila
> (an uppercase sigma in place of the a umlaut and a division symbol in
> place of the o umlaut).
>
> Octave doesn't react to hitting the national character keys on the
> keyboard. In order to chdir to that subdirectory I have to create an
> m-file containing the cd command. Proper handling of national
> characters in Octave might be a larger project, though. The data type
> used is signed 8-bit which cannot hold the necessary codes:
> octave.exe:23> double(char(246))
> ans = -10
> This should return 246 (the code for letter ö).

This might be something to fix in the readline library I use (using different
compilation switches). But, as you stated above, some problems might also
be tackled at octave-level (not MSVC-specific).

> 2. Windows Vista, relatively new setup without too many programs installed
>
> The package installed without any problems. However, when trying to run,
> the Console window doesn't show any output from Octave. Opening a new
> Octave tab in Console shows an error message:
>
> error: unable to find Java Runtime Environment

Guess what? You'll need Java to run the java-based backend... :-)
More seriously, do you have JRE installed? OTOH, I should also make the
installer smarter and not install by default java-based backend if Java is
not detected on the target system.

Michael.