Re: MinGW version binary gobbledygook error messages?

[David Bateman]

Sebastien Loisel wrote:

> David,
>
> Sometimes (most of the time), error messages in the MinGW octave come 
> out as binary gobbledygook. I'm not sure what triggers it, but I have 
> a hunch that the following factors play a role:
>
> 1) Internal function that calls error()
> 2) Long error message (I think short ones fare better)
>
> You don't have to try Workshop, gnuplot in command-line octave will do 
> it too. For a quick example, try the example from "help delaunay".
>
>           x = rand(1,10);
>           y = rand(size(x));
>           T = delaunay(x,y);
>           X = [ x(T(:,1)); x(T(:,2)); x(T(:,3)); x(T(:,1)) ];
>           Y = [ y(T(:,1)); y(T(:,2)); y(T(:,3)); y(T(:,1)) ];
>           axis([0,1,0,1]);
>           plot(X,Y,'b;;',x,y,'r*;;');
>
> Note: the problem isn't that the example doesn't work (although that's 
> a problem too). The problem is that the error message is fubar. Also 
> note that in my octave, I've renamed pgnuplot.exe to gnuplot.exe (at 
> least I think it was pgnuplot.exe) but this happens almost all the 
> time with the other builtins I've written.
>
> I reported a gnuplot problem earlier, which John said was related to 
> DEFVARS or something like that, but since I can't tell if that's the 
> same problem, well, you tell me.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sébastien Loisel
Seb,

I was aware of this problem, don't know the cause and assumed that it 
wouldn't be visible in the IDE you are developing and so didn't want to 
spend time chasing it. The problem with the goobledegook is not due to 
the DEFVAR issue, and in fact neither is the pgnuplot.exe issue. There 
are in fact three different issues

1) The error messages are goobledegook sometimes in MinGW. Once they 
change to goobledegook they stay that way. Ideas?
2) The DEFVAR of the gnuplot variables doesn't happen till the first use 
of gnuplot. This causes particular problems with things that use 
automatic_replot. Try "spy(sprandn(10,10,0.2))" for example at the first 
prompt. See the thread on DEFVAR recently for more details of the 
potentially intrusive fix.
3) I seem to have not done a clean build of octave in my mingw zip and 
the binary of gnuplot is not correctly recognized. Rebuild should fix it 
(I hope).

I'm really limited in time at the moment and so might have difficulties 
looking at the first problem in the near future. So if you find a fix 
please tell me :-)

Cheers
D.

--
David Bateman                                address@hidden
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