Re: mfilename work around

[John W. Eaton]

On 22-May-2007, Thomas Weber wrote:

| Am Dienstag, 22. Mai 2007 18:54 schrieb Jordi Gutierrez Hermoso:
| > No, of course not. Ideologies aside, why would I use Octave's Windows
| > binaries when Debian's packages work so well and run on a completely
| > free operating system?
| 
| Because it's infinitely easier to hand out a few CDs with Cygwin and showing 
| in one session how to install it than hand-holding people through the 
| installation of Debian or any other distribution and answer a million 
| question afterwards. [1]
| 
| And I feel somewhat confident with Debian and Octave ;)

I'll add that although I prefer to use free (as in speech) Unixy
systems, I don't think it is generally appropriate to responxd to bug
reports and questions by telling people to install a different OS.

My response of "I can't reproduce this on a Debian system" means just
that.  I'm not usually successful debugging things I can't reproduce,
so I try to avoid wasting time trying.  And as I don't normally use
Windows and it is a bit of a hassle for me to start a Windows system
to do any debugging, I have to leave that to someone else who actually
uses Octave on Windows.

If people want Octave on Windows or OS X or whatever system to be as
good as it is on Debian and Fedora, then those who care about these
other systems will have to step forward and do some of the work, the
same as people have been doing for Debian and Fedora.  Michael
Goffioul and David Bateman have made a great start on a nice Windows
package, but I'm sure they could use more help.

jwe