[Scilab-Dev] Q/A about features

[Samuel Gougeon]

Hello Amanda,

Thanks for this very long list of nice ideas and/or questions.
I guess you already know this wiki page: 
https://wiki.scilab.org/GSoC_project_proposal
You may add some ideas and open new pages to describe them.
But thinking about is quite easy. Doing things is nicer :)

I would like just answer to some of your questions:
> * Salvar o ambiente
> I have not found in the manual, is there any way to save all the 
> variables and macros that are in memory in an HDF5 file to then load 
> it again?
> This allows a person to stop what he is doing and continue later from 
> where he left off.

/This is possible from the console menu File => Save/Load environment.."//
/This includes opened figures, that are also saved and restored.

> * Interaction with users
> I believe it's important to give more openness to users.
> Starting with a button to allow reporting a bug from SciLAB itself and 
> send an evaluation about usability. Maybe even the documentation 
> should be open for users to re-write

Each embedded help page has a "Report a bug" link available at its top, 
pointing to the Bugzilla online bug tracker. The only issue with this 
link is that it appears also for pages of external modules, whose bugs 
trackers are not on bugzilla.
The "uman" module proposes other facilities around the documentation, 
bug reporting, archives of mailing lists, etc.
The online help pages allow any logged visitor to make some online 
comments about the page, in his/her chosen language. This service has 
been designed as for the PHP documentation. It is poorly used for Scilab 
pages, but nothing prevents using it more intensively.
Any user knowing well Scilab features can already contribute to improve 
help pages, through GIT and the Scilab codereview: 
https://codereview.scilab.org/
If not already done, you can create your own Scilab account and logging 
on help pages, the wiki, bugzilla, codeReview, etc.

> * % keyword as comment:
> For better compatibility with Octave and MatLAB. 
Just let me know why Scilab should be Matlab compatible. Matlabers have 
already Octave, that clones Matlab, and that have a rather official 
policy to be such a clone. And now it has a nice IDE!

So, i would be really interested knowing the interest to build and use 
the twin of a clone, whereas there are so many original things to do and 
build, without being so servile.
Then, why not joining more simply the Octave community?
When time to time newbies ask on Scilab mailing list "why using Scilab 
rather than Matlab", i feel that answers are most often very rare and 
poor. So, the reasons making Matlab lobbyists so shy to answer to this 
kind of questions is still really a mystery to me. But i am still 
curious ! :))

> * Colors and arrays with names instead of numbers
> .../...
>
I am not sure that i have caught what you meant. But please have a look 
to the rather straightforward following:


--> m = rand(4,3)
  m  =
    0.3616361   0.3321719   0.2693125
    0.2922267   0.5935095   0.6325745
    0.5664249   0.5015342   0.4051954
    0.4826472   0.4368588   0.9184708


--> m(m<0.2 | m>0.5) = %nan
  m  =
    0.3616361   0.3321719   0.2693125
    0.2922267   Nan         Nan
    Nan         Nan         0.4051954
    0.4826472   0.4368588   Nan

.../...

> ** Pool of formulas*
>
> .../...
> Why not let SciLAB run ODF and MathML files and convert them to 
> functions automatically?
>
> Something like
>
> exec “formula.odf”
>
> exec “formula.mml”
>
> In the case of MathML, because it is an XML format, SciLAB itself 
> already has the infrastructure to load and convert to a macro.
>

AFAIU, definitely not. Your formulae hold some formal expressions, not 
numerical ones/codes.
Scilab is made for Numerical computing, not for formal computing like 
Maxima.

HTH
Samuel


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.scilab.org/pipermail/dev/attachments/20170223/a40eed1d/attachment.htm>