Merging graphics branch

[John W. Eaton]

On 17-Jun-2008, Michael Goffioul wrote:

| On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 2:28 PM, Michael Goffioul
| <michael.goffioul at gmail.com> wrote:
| > Note also that the code above is not good, because "updating"
| > would be shared by all linked properties. The scope of
| > "updating" should be restricted to the current link object.
| > The use of new OO features would be useful here.
| 
| Thinking about this a little bit further, I realized that using an object
| to store the linking state (updating or not) won't work, because objects
| are passed by value in octave, not by reference. IMO, this is something
| I'm really missing in the other brand and it would allow much more
| flexible programming patterns: creating objects dynamically (like the
| regular classes) and being able to pass them by reference (acting
| like a pointer).

What features of Matlab work like this?  Are you talking about the new
object system (the one that uses classdef)?  Or that graphics handle
objects should be implemented differently?

| At first sight, this would mean to having octave_class
| objects to share the internal Octave_map, instead of copying it.
| Would this be imaginable?

Would that be the right thing to do for the current object system?

jwe