Re: [Texmacs-dev] Re: GNU Octave interface

[Joris van der Hoeven]

On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, michael graffam wrote:

> > Otherwise, I think that testing for the existence
> > of TEXMACS_PATH is a pritty safe proposal;
> > we do not want to create a new environment variable
> > for every system. If you really demand this,
> > then you may always set some TM_OCTAVE variable in
> > the script.
> 
> Well, we wouldn't need a new variable for each 
> system, just one variable that certifies that TeXmacs
> is the output engine. If you want to standardize on
> using TEXMACS_PATH, thats ok by me. 

You are right: I might create an environment variable
like CALLED_FROM_TEXMACS, which is set as soon as
TeXmacs is being start up. Any extern application
called from TeXmacs might use it in order to recognize
that is was called from TeXmacs.

> But, just using --texmacs isn't a complete solution.
> Octave, Bash or other languages need to have some
> way to tell their underlying scripts that TeXmacs is
> available so that those scripts know to generate
> \002verbatim and so forth, or whether to use plain
> output. Just telling the interpreter isn't enough, we
> need to tell the interpreter's programs and their
> children, and ... 
>
> This is precisely what environment vars are for, to
> describe a general feature of the user environment. 
> 
> We are basically saying that TERM=texmacs.. something
> that is VERY important.

OK, you convinced me.

> >At a first stage, we mainly want pretty-printed
> >matrices and polynomials (and all other special
> >mathematical output if this is possible).
> 
> Octave supports vectors and matrices of complex
> numbers and polynomials with complex coefficients. 
> 
> I have two routines num2scm and mat2scm that convert
> real and complex numbers and matrices to Scheme
> expressions respectively. tmdisp uses these routines
> to prettily display matrices and complex numbers in
> Octave. 
> 
> Polynomials are "prettily" printed via a seperate
> function in Octave, called polyout. I have patched
> the stock Octave polyout to detect and use TeXmacs
> features if available. 
> 
> The first stage is complete. 

Great; please tell me which version of Octave to download
and what I should do in order to get graphical output.

> >At a second stage, we may think about online
> >documentations and special menus and keyboard
> >behaviour in Octave mode.
> 
> Ok. Octave online documentation is in texinfo format
> and it executes the text-based texinfo reader to view
> these documents. Ideally we'd like to load them into
> TeXmacs directly. 
> 
> I can easily redefine the texinfo viewer that Octave
> launches, so if we could signal TeXmacs to load a
> given file either through the data pipe, or via a
> signal we'd be in business.
> 
> All we'd really need is a texinfo converter, which we
> really ought to have anyhow. 

Yes, we indeed should support texinfo,
but who wants to write the converter...?

In any case, you may generate html using texinfo
which is well understood by TeXmacs.

> >But just finishing the first stage would be enough
> >for inclusion inside TeXmacs.
> 
> I should start packaging stuff up for you, then? :)

Well, first give me instructions on what I should do
to get things working.