Access to variables internal to Octave

[John W. Eaton]

On 16-Aug-2005, address@hidden wrote:

| As I have been doing an implementation of handle graphics, I am nearing
| completion of the 'root' handle.  I do have a few questions though
| 
| 1) For the root object, there are properties for things like Echo, Diary,
| DiaryFile, etc.  I cannot retrieve the state of these by calling 'diary' or
| 'echo' using feval.  Is there some octave-internal function I can use to
| retrieve the following values: echo (on or off), diary (on or off), diaryfile(
| string name), format( short, long, short E, etc)?
| 2) Is there an octave-internal function to retrieve the terminal width and
| height used by Octave?
| 
| I could go source digging, but if some of you know it off the top of your 
head,
| it would save me time looking and give me more time for working on the handle
| graphics.

I haven't looked, but I think these are all just static variables in
the files that contain the corresponding functions.  You could either
propose a patch that exposes the variables themselves, or some
functions to return them (perhaps better, because it prevents people
from modifying the internal values apart from the current functions).

| FYI, the framework I set up for handle graphics is nearing completion. 
| Currently only 'root' and portions of 'figure' are done, but I did spend the
| time to abstract the UI toolkit away from the core 'handles'.  My plan is to
| complete root, figure, uicontrol, then start work on axes (through vtk).  A
| design document will be forthcoming (hopefully in another week or two) to
| describe the framework.

It seems you are doing this in C++?  If so, is that really necessary?
Could it perhaps be accomplished in the scripting language instead?

jwe