Re: [long] Handle Graphics and visualisation applications in Octave.

Hi,

> Windows and OS X ports are an issue.  QT is not free under windows
> and GTK is not well supported.  I don't know their status under OS X
> except of course that OS X can run X apps.

You're right that platforms are an issue.

I tested GTK2 on windows (and specifically PyGTK, and I felt that it worked quite good).

There is still wxWindows. And, maybe... java...

But maybe one solution, is to specifically design the modules in a way that 
they can be easily ported to native widgets.

Of course, if what needed is a full support of all the widget set of the native 
platform, then it would be easier to use wxWindows and create a binding to 
octave to avoid reinventing the wheel. I am always for the leanest approaches that minimize dependencies. wxWindows is a wrapper (and a huge one and complete one) around native widgets.

On the other hand, if what needed is a small and well defined subset 
(someting like the one used by  matlab), then it should be quite easy for 
qualified persons to do the port of the platform dependent part. I tend to 
prefer this approach. This approach can still use a native interface builder 
(glade for gtk, designer for qt etc) to use all the widgets without providing full 
access to them from within octave (for example, mainly placement widgets, 
paned windows, tabs..). I don't think octave users need to have full support of 
all possible widgets, but, indeed, I lack examples of matlab projects using gui.

-- 
Cheers