Plotting with Octave 3.0

[David Bateman]

Matthias Brennwald wrote:
>
> On 26.09.2008, at 09:27, David Bateman wrote:
>
>> Matthias Brennwald wrote:
>>> On 26.09.2008, at 00:23, help-octave-request at octave.org wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> | It seems that
>>>> | html manual at www.octave.org is outdated (but I'm not Octave
>>>> | developer, just user, so I don't know why is that).
>>>>
>>>> Because there are many things to do and not enough users who are also
>>>> helping out as developers?
>>>>
>>>> jwe
>>>>
>>>
>>> True. But I have the impression it is not obvious for most useres 
>>> how  to contribute code or improved documentation in a way that will 
>>> be  useful and acceptable to the 'inner circle' of Octave 
>>> developers.  Maybe a short document 'Contributing to Octave for 
>>> dummies' would be  useful. Or, if such a thing exists already, 
>>> moving this to a  prominent place would be in order.
>>>
>>> Thinking of it, I might be open to contribute to the documentation 
>>> a  bit. I guess the plotting stuff is one area that really needs  
>>> improvement. But how do I go about this?
>>>
>>
>> Such a document was recently added to the manual so I suppose it will 
>> end up on the website eventually. For now the raw text is at
>>
>> http://velveeta.che.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/hgwebdir.cgi/octave/file/a8fb37ae61b8/doc/interpreter/contrib.txi 
>>
>>
>> D.
>
> Thanks, this is very useful!
>
> As far as I can tell, though, there is hardly any information on how 
> to work on the manual itself. Would it make sense to include this 
> information, too?

Well the manual itself is a set of files like any other in the HG 
repository, so that same notes apply. Look in the the 
doc/interpreter/*.txi files in the repository.

> Also, according to the document you mentioned, people are expected to 
> know diff, texinfo, and mercurial. I am sure that most Octave users 
> who would agree to submit their stuff are not used to working with 
> these tools, so they won't submit their work. Is there a way to get 
> around this? If so, this should be explained in the above document, too.
diff you don't really need to understand. If you are modifying the 
manual then yes you do need some basic understanding of texinfo, and the 
conventions that are used in Octave for the use of texinfo. Some of that 
is explained in

http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Documentation-Tips.html#Documentation-Tips

As for mercurial, you have to understand the concepts of an SCM system 
in general and then just a few basic commands

## Only need to do the clone once
hg clone http://www.octave.org/hg/octave

cd octave/doc/interpreter
<edit doc files>
cd ..
<edit Changelog>
cd ..
hg commit -u "A. User <a.user at example.com>" -m "Modified foobar 
documentation"
hg export tip > ../MyChangeset
## Mail MyChangeset to the octave lists with an explanation


## If there are changes in the Octave repository
hg pull
hg merge tip
hg commit -m "merge"
## Might need to resolve conflicts here mainly in the Changelogs

and that is about all I ever use.

Cheers
David

-- 
David Bateman                                David.Bateman at motorola.com
Motorola Labs - Paris                        +33 1 69 35 48 04 (Ph) 
Parc Les Algorithmes, Commune de St Aubin    +33 6 72 01 06 33 (Mob) 
91193 Gif-Sur-Yvette FRANCE                  +33 1 69 35 77 01 (Fax) 

The information contained in this communication has been classified as: 

[x] General Business Information 
[ ] Motorola Internal Use Only 
[ ] Motorola Confidential Proprietary