FS#25913 - [octave] Add FLTK support

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Miguel (buo) - Wednesday, 07 September 2011, 02:10 GMT
Last edited by Ronald van Haren (pressh) - Thursday, 27 October 2011, 12:13 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Ronald van Haren (pressh)
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Current versions of Octave support the FLTK graphics toolkit as an alternative to gnuplot. As I understand it, devolpment will focus on FLTK given the limitations of gnuplot.

It would be nice if Arch's octave would support FLTK. All that is needed is add FLTK as a dependency and make sure configure finds it.

As it stands now, trying to use the FLTK backend gives this result:

octave:1> graphics_toolkit ('fltk')
error: feval: function `__init_fltk__' not found
error: called from:
error: /usr/share/octave/3.4.2/m/plot/graphics_toolkit.m at line 56, column 5
octave:1> available_graphics_toolkits
ans =
{
[1,1] = gnuplot
}
octave:3>
This task depends upon

Closed by  Ronald van Haren (pressh)
Thursday, 27 October 2011, 12:13 GMT
Reason for closing:  Implemented
Additional comments about closing:  octave 3.4.3
Comment by Ronald van Haren (pressh) - Wednesday, 07 September 2011, 13:02 GMT
If I'm not mistaken the FLTK backend is still considered experimental by upstream?
Comment by Miguel (buo) - Wednesday, 07 September 2011, 16:42 GMT
That is correct, it is experimental. However, it works well enough for many purposes in 3.2.4, and it is enabled by default if configure finds the fltk libraries.

I understand if you prefer not to support fltk while it is marked experimental. If that's the case, feel free to close this request.
Comment by Stefano Avallone (stavallo) - Thursday, 29 September 2011, 06:55 GMT
Though the FLTK backend is still considered experimental, it might be worth to add its support (seems to be faster for 3d plotting, adds some features such as zooming and panning the plot, PostScript level 3 printing, and, in general, looks nicer than gnuplot).

I would suggest (of course, that is only my wish) to add the fltk package (which resides in [extra]) to the makedepends and optdepends of octave. This way, users are not forced to install fltk. Then, even though a user has fltk installed, the gnuplot backend is still the default one. Indeed, I compiled octave with fltk installed and I get:

octave:1> available_graphics_toolkits
ans =
{
[1,1] = gnuplot
}

To use the FLTK backend, I need to explicitly type

octave:2> graphics_toolkit ("fltk")

In such a way, the FLTK backend is only used by users that want to use it. You give the possibility to use the FLTK backend to users that want to use it, with no harm to users that prefer to use the gnuplot backend.

This is just my opinion. In any case, I wish to thank you (and all the Arch developers) for maintaining such a great distro.

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