RE: Octave reputation

[Aaron Birenboim]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Søren Hauberg [mailto:address@hidden 
> Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 7:26 AM
> To: Octave Maintainers List
> Subject: Octave reputation
> 
> Hi,
>    I was just talking to one of my professors about how much more 
> wonderful Octave is compared to Matlab. And he made the following 
> statements against octave:
> 
> 1) Octave isn't developed any more.
> 2) Octave doesn't have any of the toolboxes that matlab has.
> 
> Now both of these statements are completely wrong which I 
> told him, ...

> that's not the point. The point is that people (I've heard these 
> arguments several times before) _think_ these statements are correct.
>    I'm guessing that statement 1 is because there hasn't been 
> a stable 
> release in years. Octave 3.0 will fix that (yay!).
>    I don't really know why Octave-forge is unknown.
>    Anyway, I'm writing this mail to ask how we should avoid people 
> making these statements in the future? The way I see it, we should
> 
> 1) Have stable releases more often (after 3.0 of course).
> 2) Put more visible links to Octave-Forge on the Octave website.

Here's the view of a reluctant MatLab user, who wishes he could use more
octave.
I do some simple things on octave where I don't have a MatLab license.

Obdviously, MatLab is popular and under maintainence.  The first 1) is just
plain wrong.
I can't state weather development is as active as SciLab.
I hear SciLab is the favorite at IIT (Indian Inst. Tech.), and they
Would likely be contributing, too.

MatLab has many, many toolboxes.  Some are a good value.  Some are a joke.
I do image processing.  I'd rather write a few mex functions for the
Core operations that I need to be fast than pay their exhorbanant fee for
that one.
Nothing competes with Simulink.  If you want Simulink, buy MatLab.
(I do NOT use Simulink!)

Optimization toolboxes, etc... See image processing.  If octave doesn't
Have it, write a MEX/OCT wrapper to GSL, LAPACK, whatever.
WAAAY overpriced at MatLab.

So... The only real toolbox that I see MatLab as having no real
Rival is SimuLink.

I would see the stability issue as real.
The base MatLab/GnuPlot plotting is not acceptable for me.
I have tried twice to install that new one, now part of the base I think.
The one that uses OpenGL or Mesa or some 3D graphics library.
It has never worked.  Not windows/cygwin.  Not LINUX.
I think I have tried 3 times.
I have not put a large effort into finding the problem.
I just don't use Octave if I need any significant plotting.

I joined this list to get it figured out, but haven't taken the effort yet.
This gives the impression of 'instability' to comercial software users.
Even if it is just an Octave-Forge problem, or a simple step I goofed
Up in the install.

I am not aware of GUI toolboxes, either for MatLab or Octave.
That is another place where MatLab might be ahead.
I will be wanting some cross-platform GUI front end someday.

   ****

So...  I can see where 'unstable' could be a viable argument.
Not that it crashes, but that some features don't just
Work after install.

           aaron