[Texmacs-dev] Re: GNU Octave interface

[Andrey G. Grozin]

>From address@hidden Sat Oct  5 11:35:30 2002
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 09:36:53 +0700
From: Andrey G. Grozin <address@hidden>
Reply-To: address@hidden
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: GNU Octave m-files for TeXmacs

Hello *,

Some problems with the Octave interface
(I mean my interface, but most of the same problems are surely present in
the other one, too):

1. Octave uses \ as the reverse-division operator. It is very often used,
e.g., to solve linear systems. How can I input \ in the octave-input
environment? Is there a way to disable the special treatment od the \ key
in this environment?

2. I guess that the following code in, e.g., maxima.scm:

(define (maxima-input-rows t)
  (display "matrix(")
  (maxima-input-row (car t))
  (maxima-input-var-rows (cdr t))
  (display ")"))

deals with the conversion of 2-dimensional matrix input to the Maxima
syntax. If I want the Matlab-like syntax
[a,b,c;d,e,f;g,h,i]
instead, how should I adapt this for octave.scm?

3. In my interface, error messages are sent to TeXmacs as
\2latex:\\red <error message> \\black\5
in order to have them in red. This leads to problems if the <error
message> involves ^ or \. Can I use verbatim:, but have red text?

4. When run from TeXmacs, Octave does not call less and info (a good
thing). Instead, simple help commands dump huge portions of the manual
into TeXmacs. So, help is not usable.

5. I think thar writing matrices without alignment at the decimal point is
*absolutely inacceptable*. The first need to understand a matrix is to see
at a glance, where the essential entries are. I can generate LaTex like
following:

address@hidden
...
... & 123 & 456 & ... \\
...
\end{array}

to produce 123.456 (each number takes two columns of the array,
there is . between the columns, and no extra space around this dot). This
is the standard technique in LaTeX. Will TeXmacs understand it?

6. Octave supports tab-completion. Probably, with the new features for
tab-completion in TeXmacs, we can support it, too. But I don't know how to
do this.

To summarize: I think that if we'll work really hard, we'll have a
deteriorated replica of the command-line interface of Octave.

Best wishes,
Andrey