Re: Proposal for GSoC. (address@hidden)

[Michael Goffioul]

I had a quick look and it seems fine. However, I think the priorities should be the following (this is by definition subjective, so I don't expect everyone to agree with me; take this more as a suggestion):

1) Define the main GUI paradigm.

This is indeed first in your list. Ideally every subwindow should behave equally: you should be able to split them vertically or horizontally, you should be able to merge them into a tab widget, you should be able to pop them out. If you have the opportunity to try the Visual Studio interface, this is more or less what I mean (the docking system, not the whole environment).

It's not as simple as it sound, as this is different from the main Qt paradigm where you have a central widget with satellite dockable windows. I already tried to use a QMainWindow without any central widget, with only dockable windows. This was almost fine, except that once popped out, the window always stays on top of the main octave window, which is not always the desired behavior (for instance an editor window or a documentation browser window).

I looked for other solutions, but couldn't find any acceptable ones. You might need to implement your own widget to achieve that, but this not be a trivial task at all.

2) Enhance user experience in the editor / debugger

This is IMO on the key point in a GUI: providing a powerful editor/debugger tightly integrated with octave. From the editor point of view, this means for instance things like:

- smart auto-completion: not only based on a fixed set of keywords, but using the current content of the file being edited, functions in current octave path...

- ability to go to a function definition (in current file or in another m-file)

- ability to go to the documentation of currently highlighted function

From a debugger point of view, this can mean things like:

- step-into -> open file

- hovering over a variable -> pops up a tooltip with variable content (not only a static tooltip, but a widget allowing to traverse complex data structures, again Visual Studio has some good bits)

3) Documentation browser

Michael.

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:08 PM, Atul Jangra (Google Docs) <address@hidden> wrote:

Attached: proposal

Message from address@hidden:

Hey Maintainers
This is my sample proposal for Google Summer of Code 2012. I have included only important things. Will update it with other simple details. 
Please review this proposal and suggest me some changes that I should include. I am applying for Octave GUI Project.

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