Re: Who uses Octave?

[Michael Goffioul]

On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Chipmuenk <address@hidden> wrote:
> - First and foremost: No proper GUI - my students are not willing to use the
> software mainly due
> to this reason, they rather get a cracked ML version instead (which I
> disapprove of!).

This something that is being worked on, but it's taking time. If by
GUI you mean the ability to build GUI, then you might also want to
take a look at QtHandles that implements a significant part of the ML
uiXXX stuffs (https://github.com/goffioul/QtHandles).

> - No fixpoint package, I've written some simple (and slow!) functions to get
> around this, but I
> think it is a pity that the "fixed" package seems to be dead

The original author doesn't have the time to maintain it. So if you're
willing to take it over, that would be a nice way to contribute to
octave. Most of the code is still valid, but it doesn't work anymore,
because octave's API has changed. Bringing it back to life shouldn't
be too difficult, even without being C/C++ expert.

> - A Filter GUI like "Filter Design and Analysis" in ML is essential for
> teaching the basics of
> DSP. I could help to create such a GUI, also with fixpoint / quantized
> arithmetic, but I'm not
> sure about the state of Zenity or some other (?) GUI package and how it fits
> with the ongoing
> changes of the graphical backend. And I'm not a C / C++ programmer.

I encourage you to have a look at QtHandles. It's not in the scope of
octave core to develop a Filter Design GUI, but using the uiXXX
functions (as implemented by Qthandles), it should be possible to
implement one by EE engineers like you or your students.

> - Highlevel FPGA design tools are only available for ML / SL. I have some
> ideas how to get around
> this with a "poor mans design flow" but before I dive into this I would like
> to understand what
> will likely happen (and when!) with the other issues

This is obviously out of the scope of octave core. But again, this is
something that EE engineers could contribute.

> - Hardware I/O: I'm not sure how easy it it to talk to simple analog and
> digital I/O cards but
> haven't heard a lot of success stories yet. The main OS of my students is
> Windows, other OS are <
> 10% I would guess.

This has been mentioned a couple of times before. The main problem
there seems to be the cross-platform issue.

Michael.