Re: kernel density smoother?

[forkandwait]

> a good indication that people shouldn't
> declare me the Octave-Forge leader). Concrete ideas on how to improve
> the situation are, however, most welcome as it is a problem that
> concerns me.

I guess I may have been a little "flip" in my comments.  I am not sure strong 
leadership is necessarily the answer, though it might help.  What is great 
about Python is that there is a SINGLE, documented, well defined standard 
library.  This library grows steadily, but there is a discussion process before 
something makes it into the library, there are votes on where it goes, and then 
it is documented/ enforced / distributed at the same level as the language 
itself.  And whenever there is no clear consensus or the process gets bogged 
down, Guido reserves the right to declare by fiat what should happen.

In this particular example, I would NOT have voted to have the kernel density 
smoother function in the econometrics package, but rather in either statistics 
or core. And I would have statistics ALWAYS distributed with the main package.  
But I definitely think it belongs with a standard distribution of octave, and 
its code should be tracked in the main source.  Same with textread. Same 
probably with csv2cell, after a process of deciding to put it into the standard 
library, even though the other large competitor doesn't have it in their 
distribution (which might be a criteria for inclusion).  Etc.

THere are several "levels" of library -- planet python (or whatever it is 
called) is where random people put up their scripts.   Then scripts that get 
used regularly get adopted into the inner circle and tracked with the main 
source.

I don't have a surplus of time or skill, but I have a LOT of free soft karma to 
repay if I can help.