GNU Octave Gets a GUI 166
jones_supa writes "GNU Octave — the open source numerical computation suite compatible with MATLAB — is doing very well. The new 3.8 release is a big change, as it brings a graphical user interface, a feature which has long been requested by users. It is peppered with OpenGL acceleration and uses the super fast FLTK toolkit for widgets. The CLI interface still remains available and GNUplot is used as a fallback in cases where OpenGL or FLTK support is not available. Other changes to Octave 3.8 are support for nested functions with scoping rules, limited support for named exceptions, new regular expressions, a TeX parser for the FLTK toolkit, overhauls to many of the m-files, function rewrites, and numerous other changes and bug fixes."
Having a GUI is great... (Score:2)
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...but does it run linux?
It runs on Linux better than any other OS. Actually, it seems that Octave itself, not only the GUI, runs much better in Linux than MacOS or Windows. Probably, in part because the large majority of Octave developers uses Linux only.
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scilab is better but french. (Score:3, Interesting)
Scilab is far better and always had native 3D graphics, a GUI and a simulation engine: scicos/xcos. It atonishes me that it is systematically ignored. Is it because is french?
Re:scilab is better but french. (Score:5, Informative)
As others have pointed out, octave runs (mostly) unmodified matlab code. Scilab doesn't. However scilab is just close enough to matlab to be really annoying if you are used to matlab. I think that is really why octave is more popular than scilab (probably doesn't have anything to do with scilab being more French but who knows.) Don't want to pay $$$$ for matlab? Install otave for free and do almost everything you would normally do with matlab w/o relearning much of anything. One thing about octave though is that the graphics aren't as nice as scilab and aren't nearly as nice as matlab. I am not to excited about the gui (even use the cli on the latest version of matlab) but hopefully this new version will make the graphics in octave more in line with the other packages.
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Sagemath is not just freeware but actual open source, and it is not even that, it's just a repackaging of existing software packages IIRC.
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Sagemath is not just freeware but actual open source, and it is not even that, it's just a repackaging of existing software packages IIRC.
This is very incorrect. Sage's website accurately describes it: "It combines the power of many existing open-source packages into a common Python-based interface. Mission: Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab."
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La vie est une tragédie pour celui qui sent, et une comédie pour celui qui pense.
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Scilab is far better and always had native 3D graphics, a GUI and a simulation engine: scicos/xcos. It atonishes me that it is systematically ignored. Is it because is french?
Personally, I find Scilab pretty awful (and for the record, I'm french).
What is the added value over Python? (Score:2)
There are numerous interactive python consoles out there that have the same ease of use as the Matlab CLI had back when I used that.
It seems to be much easier to compile a FORTRAN or C++ library to library than can be used by Python code.
Also, performance-wise Octave has always been a bit disappointing, wasn't it?
Re:What is the added value over Python? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. This runs unmodified MATLAB code.
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* In most cases. I used to manage an octave and a matlab library and there were plenty of places in the code where we had to fork the code on a test "Is this octave?" to call the right function.
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Re:What is the added value over Python? (Score:5, Informative)
MATLAB compatibility. From my experience that is just about it, both are pretty feature complete but as Octave basically copies MATLAB warts and all so I don't know why anyone would use it if they knew other nicer programming languages. And if you have access to MATLAB and use it every day then MATLAB is just way faster than Octave (or at least was last time I used it).
Being a copy of MATLAB is really useful though, and Octave serves a role there. I code primarily in python (or C/C++) for work, but most of my colleagues use MATLAB. The Linux MATLAB client is crap and a pain to install and keep working, but Octave is one apt-get away and usually does the trick when I need to run my colleagues scripts or write something for them. It has a permanent spot on my hard drive for that.
Re:What is the added value over Python? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, the fact that it runs always, while MATLAB does only sometimes, is why I use it when I need to run MATLAB stuff, even though my institution actually has a MATLAB site-license. Octave generally just works, while MATLAB has a bunch of license-server nonsense. Among other things, it doesn't work at all if you're offline (e.g. on a plane), since it has to contact the license server, and network-licensed copies have no Steam-style "offline mode", even a temporary one. And even online, the license server appears to be run on a toaster and down half the time, although that's probably my university's fault rather than MathWorks's fault.
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so I don't know why anyone would use it if they knew other nicer programming languages.
"Nicer" is a matter of opinion, and also a matter of what you're using it for. Matlab/Octave is designed from the very start for numerical math, and if that's what you're doing, I'd say it's a slightly nicer language than Python/Numpy/Scipy. But for anything other than numerical math, Python is a much nicer language.
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I agree this is subjective, and I agree this is a horses for courses situation. But MATLAB isn't designed for abstract numerical computing, it is designed for linear algebra. If you have a task which you know can be reduced entirely (or at least almost entirely) to linear algebra (like a prototype neural network training scheme I was looking at a while back in MATLAB), then sure I'd say I find MATLAB's syntax a bit easier to work with. But if we are talking general numerical computing, or numerical computin
Re:What is the added value over Python? (Score:5, Informative)
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Octave is good when you are used to code in a syntax like of Matlab and have already code written for it. It even improves on the languages, as it offers more ortogonality, e.g. one can further slice array slices, etc.
Having used Matlab, Octave and Python+Scipy/Numpy, I still prefer Octave of all three. It runs everywhere, I've even used it in a system running on a Nokia N900 mobile phone. I find the python linear algebra syntax quite bad. Having to use "dot" for matrix multiplication, instead of an infix
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Yes, python's syntax is too functional. It starts when you can't get out of the interpreter without typing parentheses at the end of "exit". And regex in Python is a pain because of the function-argument syntax. Ruby's is much easier to use because you don't have to escape a regex to fit it into a string, and you can use the infix operator =~.
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Matlab licenses are really expensive, but the program is really good at linear algebra and related calculations; so it's heavily used by engineers who are often trained in school to use it. For small engineering shops they can maybe afford a single Matlab license, but they don't have to pay for octave. So, you load your heavy work on the matlab machine and fallback on octave to collect and analyze your test data when speed isn't a worry.
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Matlab itself can be easily replaced by Octave. But the value of matlab is in the available domain specific toolboxes and companies are willing to pay the 4- and 5-digit prices for these extension because they can save man-months or even man-years with them.
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Wish I could mod the parent up.
If you use a tool like Matlab professionally,. the purchase cost isn't a significant issue. Matlab's toolboxes, and support are excellent. I've used Octave,and Python-pylab. Both are fine, but I'm more productive with Matlab.
Of course other people solving different types of problem may see very different results. I do mostly electron accelerator calculations and control, and so far matlab is the best tool I've found for those applications.
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Basically, the academia is filled with lemmings who just barely know elementary Matlab syntax and how to click on the Matlab icon. Being compatible with Matlab is a big advantage. At the same time though, I'd agree that Python or R are better environments for those willing to learn a new language.
Good (Score:3, Informative)
.. but Matplotlib + iPython Notebook + Pandas is worth a look, for those trying to escape "Matlab Prison"
CDC 405 Punch Card Support (Score:1)
This is ridiculous. Why do we need some fancy GUI nonsense?
If this breaks the backwards-compatibility with my trusty CDC 405 punch card reader, I'm taking my custom elsewhere!
qtoctave (Score:5, Interesting)
it has one ALREADY
I have been using Qtoctave for a VERY long time
the current in SUISE12.3
---
Repository: Packman Repository
Name: qtoctave
Version: 0.10.1-2.28
Arch: x86_64
Re: qtoctave (Score:4, Informative)
you will, however, find that no one works on it any more, the last active dev (me) now directs contributions to the official gui.
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So, could you explain, why FLTK and not Qt? Qt seems to be the common choice nowadays. I know fltk is very lightweight but octave isn't so I guess that's not the main reason.
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QtOctave is not an integrated GUI for Octave - it's more of a graphically enhanced command line interface. It looks great on the surface but fails to have any depth. I don't mean to fault the QtOctave project - limitations in Octave are what prevented it from working well. From what I've read, Octave has been undergoing changes for the past two years in order to restructure it in such a way that it can work well with a GUI.
The situation is similar to GCC. GCC does not integrate will with IDEs - sort
Is Xoctave obsolete? (Score:1)
I'd be interested in seeing the GUI and seeing if it is good enough to stop using Xoctave [xoctave.com], which gives it a MATLAB-like [mathworks.com] interface. Xoctave is nice, but pricey, which is why I am still using the free beta version.
Broken on OSX. (Score:2)
Downloaded,
Got an error in "stdio.h"
Hmmm. Maybe there's a reason this hasn't been announced.
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even better: R (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a bit surprised to find that, 60 comments in, nobody's yet suggested R , e.g. http://cran.r-project.org/ [r-project.org] as an alternative. There are several different GUIs available for R (Rstudio, Rcommander, Rjava,...), it's 100% opensource, and frankly most of us R users find the syntax and flexibility to be far better than MatLab. And the graphics have to be seen to be believed. You can do anything and then some.
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R is for statistics. Octave is for linear algebra.
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Re:even better: R (Score:4, Informative)
R has everything I need for linear algebra. [bendixcarstensen.com]
I love the graphics on R as well. Matlab always looks too computer-y for me. However, the thing I love the most about R is that not only is it free and top-notch quality, but I run it on my Windows box, linux box, for giggles I've loaded it on Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi, and if I ever get around to rooting my phone, I could even load it on there as well. No license files.
With regard to Octave, when I've been given m-files, I've found Octave to be a very good substitute for Matlab.
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I use Octave and totally ignore Matlab compatibility. This enables me to use the (IMO vastly superior) Octave syntax additions. On the odd occasion I need to go back to Matlab, I find the syntax incredibly restrictive. Small things like ++i, default parameters, and temporary expressions, all of which make life so much easier. I understand why this situation exists, but I think it's a terrible shame.
Then there's Octave's ASCII format for storing structures and multidimensional (>2 dim) arrays. That single
Now back to a post about GNU Octave (Score:1)
Ignoring that I haven't finished downloading jdk-7u45 yet,
setenv LLVM_LIBS /usr/lib/ocaml # this is wrong /usr/bin /usr/lib/qt3/:/usr/include/qt3 ./configure --disable-extra-warning-flags --with-ccolamd-includedir=/usr/include/suitesparse --with-ccolamd-libdir=/usr/lib --with-camd-includedir=/usr/include/suitesparse/:/usr/include/w32api/:/usr/bin --with-camd-libdir=/usr/lib/:/usr/lib/w32api --with-cxsparse-includedir=/usr/lib/w32api --with-cxsparse-libdir=/usr/lib/w32api -
setenv LLVM_CONFIG
setenv QT_LIB
Julia (Score:2)
Those who're interested in Matlab alternatives would be well served to check out Julia [slashdot.org].
It's a very clean language and has very good (LLVM based) performance!
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Bah, somehow my Julia link got fubared. Anyhow, here's a good one:
julialang.org [julialang.org]
Is it a competitor? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the past year, I've never seen a time when Mathworks wasn't hiring hundreds of people [mathworks.com]. They even run sponsorships (read: ads) on NPR all the time about how many jobs they have.
How does Octave or any other open source tool hold up against something with so many resources behind it?
I'm asking honestly. I know Apache and Firefox certainly do pretty well, but the former has a huge business community using it, and the latter has an enormous consumer user base. How do smaller projects compare to big software tools? For example, isn't it generally understood among graphic artists that Gimp doesn't measure up to Photoshop?
Re:Is it a competitor? (Score:5, Funny)
For example, isn't it generally understood among graphic artists that Gimp doesn't measure up to Photoshop?
Yes, but you get a lot more bang for your buck.
Re: Is it a competitor? (Score:1)
Error: Divide by zero.
Does not compute.
Not really (Score:4, Interesting)
The cost of using Gimp is not really zero. At least, if you are coming from a Photoshop background. You have to invest some time (surprisingly little!) in getting to know the software. It is, however, very capable software and the out-of-pocket cost is nil. It may be that investing some time is a good business proposition. It has been for me, as an independent graphics artist.
I find Gimp to be a very capable application. My workflow isn't, in any way, hampered by choosing Gimp in stead of Photoshop. Yes, that took some time, and at times it was a steep learning curve. But I wouldn't go back to Photoshop for the kind of projects I do. I'd feel cramped if I'd have to.
Re: Is it a competitor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Error: Divide by zero.
Does not compute.
In a perfect world where piracy is zero, all people who will not pay for Photoshop are forced to use GIMP and other alternatives, or just stay out of the race. The problem in our world is few people see piracy as a problem and make statements such as this as if Adobe's boxes were all marked "MSRP: $0" instead of $600 or $1000 for the non-student versions. Just skip this post if you advocate otherwise. I don't want your reasons.
If you basically have no barriers to acquiring Photoshop, then sadly there's no reason to "invest" on the less developed product, even if it is ALSO free.
Adobe and Microsoft both know that piracy tends to drive adoption out of increased eyeballs on the de-facto tools. This hurts the number of developers who would otherwise improve Gimp out of sheer need. We have Linux today because someone in the nineties wanted a free alternative. Someone like that living in today's pirate friendly world would have few reasons to bother working with others, when he can just shut up and torrent multi-thousand dollar software.
Does all that free work up on deviantart get made with paid copies of Photoshop, especially for broke amateurs contributing from humble third-world countries? nobody there buys personal software.
If you're one of us who won't pirate, you'll find the problem. Just by the power of numbers, intentional or unknowing free-loaders *dictate* practices for everyone. It's free for them to send you their work in PSD format, or ppt and docx for Windows office work, so they'll do it and assume you have the reader for free on your machine.
Not so much a problem for geeks who know of Openoffice, Gimp or the free converters online, but things get to the point where you have random computer illiterate friends expecting you to have those installed on your mother's machine to read some random forward, and think YOU are the one with the problem for not having pirated. But most of them are clueless that their PC is "fine" because someone else skirted paying hundreds of dollars for Office and other software. They just assume all PC's can read all files and that yours is broken. They're driving up the pressure for others to pay for Office and Photoshop. More realistically, it's just more pressure to pirate!
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We have Linux today because someone in the nineties wanted a free alternative.
I'm pretty sure Linus already had Windows. What he wanted was something like UNIX.
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What he wanted was something like UNIX.
I guess you mean something different from FreeBSD? heh
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD#History [wikipedia.org]
FreeBSD development began in 1993
Wow, Linus couldn't just have waited two years?
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You mean 386BSD. Linux predates FreeBSD.
he used Minix, wanted 32 bit and modifiable (Score:3)
Linus used Minix to write Linux. His motivations included pure geek fun, 32 bit support, and the ability to modify and distribute. Minix was free of charge, but not 100% freedom. You weren't allowed to modify Minix and distribute your own version. At the time, BSD included code written and controlled by AT&T.
http://www.learnlinux.ie/content/linus-torvalds-original-announcement-usenet [learnlinux.ie]
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@Vlueboy
That's a bad example of your point, KDE might be a better example. Linux came out of the Minix community, Minix was open source. Linux was a free alternative to a free product. Meant to sit halfway between the professional open source kernels that GNU was doing (Hurd) and the educational but rather impractical Minix kernel.
Re:Is it a competitor? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) available at no cost
2)project immortality independent of it's creator's solvency.
3)ability to be adapted to fit a specific need.
who would have guessed in 1991 that linux would dominate mobile computing like it has
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2)project immortality independent of it's creator's solvency.
3)ability to be adapted to fit a specific need.
These only apply to some projects. Most die off when their creator leaves, and this adaptation you mention isn't all that common.
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Linux is the kernel, and I think the OP understood that. Android could be ported to another kernel, but they went with Linux, and that is amazing when you think about the chain of events which led there.
Re:Is it a competitor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of those jobs are for "application engineers" and not developers. An application engineer is a little like tech support and a little like sales. They will work closely with existing customers to make Matlab work for their customers application and they'll also try to upsell new features.
Octave wouldn't have the same type of support structure but might have similar numbers of man power contributing to the development.
Photoshop cloud different, not better (Score:5, Interesting)
I have the complete Adobe suite. I use Gimp more often. Photoshop, like MS Office, is the de facto file exchange format in certain fields. Photoshop is also much slower than Gimp and in my opinion harder to use, hiding commonly used tools like rectangular selection underneath other tools.
Neither is BETTER in an absolute sense. Most professional software engineers use/used C. That doesn't make C better than JavaScript.
Re: GIMP vs. Photoshop (Score:3, Insightful)
Whenever there's a comparison between an open source product and a proprietary somebody always brings up the statement that "GIMP" is inferior to Photoshop like it's the "incontestable, revealed by Jesus Christ himself, truth" without *any* kind of supporting evidence.
The Toe, I don't hold you personally accountable for repeating what's become a cultural FUD meme, but I do feel that somebody has got to set the record straight here.
I would not consider myself an expert on image manipulation software, but I
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I would not consider myself an expert on image manipulation software, but I would consider myself competent enough to detect the stench of bullshit when it's spoken. I would very much like to see someone provide a valid metric for comparing Photoshop vs. GIMP..
Good luck with that quest.
Just before Christmas, I did some graphics work for a customer, and most of the 'grunt' work was dome in Gimp (and yes, I have fully licensed copies of CS4 and CS5 at my disposal).
It's just another tool, and I use it when I need it. (I know of other 'professional' graphics artists who still use PSP)
(Just for completeness, the final output design for this project was generated via Coreldraw X5).
Re: GIMP vs. Photoshop (Score:5, Interesting)
I used Photoshop a long time ago on Macintoshes. It was supremely intuitive to use. GIMP today is much worse than Photoshop of old. I've recently paid the Adobe tax (wife has a business that requires it) and the new Photoshop is a nightmare. Current versions of GIMP and Photoshop are both non intuitive and break the expected select/act behavior.
The same is true of illustrator. The current interface is very unclear. I purchased a book to get past the initial confusion.
I don't understand the rationale. They don't explain it. The manuals should perhaps start with a "Look it works like this and here's why" section. It's so much easier to follow the logic of a UI when you understand what the rationale is.
Of course it could just be bad design.
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Ouch, GIMP is a usability disaster since they separated Save As and Export. I use Save As, every. single. time. And then realize it's wrong every. single. time. I am unable to override decades of muscle memory, even if I consciously know I should not use Save As in GIMP.
Photoshop is only considered usable because people train themselves to use it. For someone who does use Photoshop often, trust me, its user interface is bizarre, unintuitive, and just plain wacky. It's like WordPerfect 5.1 in the way you hav
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Never used Manga Studio. Is it useful for non Manga things? God I need a decent bitmap manipulation package. Photoshop isn't it.
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> quite good if you plan on inking)
"inking" is just a fancy word for tracing. See:
COLLECTOR: So you draw this! .ink it'!
BANKY: (signing the comic)
I ink it and I'm also the colorist.
The guy next to me draws it. But we
both came up with the characters,
COLLECTOR: What's that mean - you
BANKY: Well. It means that Holden draws the
pictures in pencil, and then he gives
it to me to go over in ink
COLLECTOR: So you just trace!
Banky freezes up. He composes himself and continues
signing.
BANKY: It's not tracing. I ad
Re: Drawing in GIMP (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking as someone who uses these kinds of programs mainly for drawing/painting, GIMP is useless to me; I've yet to find a way to rotate/flip the viewport (not the image itself), save as/export issues as you've mentioned, no easy way to configure some necessary shortcuts (though it's been some months since I've used it, so I may be misremembering or it may have changed), the number bars for brush size, etc. are fucking awful, etc.
You can't find viewport adjustment because it doesn't exist; GIMP is oriented toward image manipulation, not creation. Using GIMP or Photoshop as a drawing tool is a case of forcing the tool to be used in ways it wasn't originally intended, and unlike Photoshop, GIMP doesn't have the development resources for adding those sorts of things.
What you should really be using is Krita [krita.org], which lives somewhere between the extremes of GIMP and MyPaint. It isn't as powerful for editing as GIMP is, but it still has various editing tools, while still being focused on creation tools.
Some interesting Krita features:
* Non-destructive (i.e. viewpoint only) canvas rotation.
* Non-destructive mirroring of the canvas.
* Multiple viewports of the same canvas with independent zoom, mirroring, rotation.
* Different layer types, including paint, vector, and filter.
* Layer grouping.
* Filter layers can be applied to either a single layer or a layer group, modifying the composite of the group's layers.
* These Filters are non-destructive: they can be added or removed, and the layer(s) they affect can be edited while they're in use.
* An excellent pop-up colour and brush selector [timotheegiet.com]. The centre is a normal colour selector, the middle ring lists the last twelve used colours, and the outer ring has ten brushes of your choice.
* Multiple brush engines, all very flexible. The normal pixel brush engine is powerful by itself, but there is also a colour smudge brush for smooth blending (not mixing), a brush that emulates the harmony [mrdoob.com] brushes, another that emulates Alchemy [chemy.org]'s shape brush, and "deform brush" that can nudge and move strokes on the canvas.
* An editable perspective grid. Brush strokes can be forced to follow it for striaght, accurate lines.
* Pseudo-infinite canvas. The canvas is finite, but when you scroll past the edge, an arrow appears; click it and the canvas extends in that direction. Not as nice as MyPaint, but still better than using a resize UI for quick extending.
* Sessions. You can set up different UI layouts and change them on-the-fly with a click.
* Different colour and shade selectors available, including the MyPaint one.
* CMYK, RGB, and other colour models available, as well as varying bit depths
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it would be interesting to see how many people that get paid to do graphics, and have legit copies of Photoshop, keep the Gimp or other free and open source tools on their workstations, and use them at least for some work. I don't know what the percentage would be in the arts, but if its anything like the situation with math or science programs, it's at least in the double digits, and I wouldn't be surprised if its near half.
Photoshop as a platform (Score:4, Informative)
Examples of bullshit metrics would be something like "has to support Photoshop plugins"
Would "has to support industry-standard, proprietary plugins A, B, and C, which are critical in my company's field of work and whose developers refuse to take our money for a port to GIMP" be more honest?
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Whenever there's a comparison between an open source product and a proprietary somebody always brings up the statement that "GIMP" is inferior to Photoshop like it's the "incontestable, revealed by Jesus Christ himself, truth" without *any* kind of supporting evidence.
Whenever someone comes up with a comment like yours, the easy answer is always CMYK. Gimp doesn't support it.
And that's just the most obvious problem.
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Not perfect, but could be sufficient for some use cases.
When you say it like that, it sounds perfectly adequate.
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For what it's worth, I rarely use either program
This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that you have no clue what you're talking about.
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Yes it is generally understood, whether it's true or not is a separate question. And more to the point most people who have Photoshop aren't professional graphic designers that have any use for the purported advantages, they just want to do some basic photo editing. And really, while GIMP is less pleasant to use it can do pretty much everything that Photoshop can do, plus adds a few extra features of it's own. Similarly Blender versus 3dsMax or Maya - each has their advantages, but for the most part they'
Re:Is it a competitor? (Score:5, Insightful)
We all wish Mathworks/MatLab well. I used it at university and I use it at work. I use Octave at home (and sometimes at work). Octave is good for getting answers, not so good at graphing.
Are they competitors? Yes. Is there room for both? Yes.
Regarding Gimp vs Photoshop: I've never used photoshop (because of price) but I use Gimp all the time. The price is right and the functionality is there. I will never care about Photoshop because I'm not an artist. I think the same is true for Octave, many people have a light simulation or similar and Octave is good and available.
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We all wish Mathworks/MatLab well. I used it at university and I use it at work. I use Octave at home (and sometimes at work). Octave is good for getting answers, not so good at graphing.
Are they competitors? Yes. Is there room for both? Yes.
There is room for both even within the same organization. Wherever your scripts are fairly standard MATLAB and don't use GUIs or toolboxes, you can use Octave as a drop-in replacement and save money on floating licenses. With a little legwork, I had Octave producing very nice graphs comparable to MATLAB. I never got the go-ahead to attempt a more substantial deployment, unfortunately.
Anyway, congrats to John Eaton and the Octave developers on the final GUI release. I remember checking the early versions
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Re:Is it a competitor? (Score:5, Informative)
It's enormously cheaper. I'm now at a commercial analytic software company which could use MATLAB productively, but it isn't completely essential. Just one machine-locked license with a small array of basic toolboxes was $35,000 with a substantial yearly fee. Mathworks obviously didn't want our business. The attitude from management was that they pay money to hire smart people who know how to figure out things and we can use R or python or octave for free on all of our servers and PC clients. At $500 they might have had a sale.
I compiled it from source and use octave, and yes commercial MATLAB is certainly a better and more comprehensive product.
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How does Octave or any other open source tool hold up against something with so many resources behind it?
Background: I'm an ECSE student who has used both throughout my course.
Octave is very much like LibreOffice - it's usually good enough to use instead of MATLAB, but it's not perfect. Most of the functions are there, though some which are commonly used but not strictly necessary (e.g. importdata) are not. Octave's syntax is also looser than MATLAB's (you can use ! instead of ~ for logical negation), which means that you still need to test a program in MATLAB if that's what the recipient is going to be runnin
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One problem with Octave is that the binaries as distributed for many platforms do not include any serious optimizations. For example, most do not include the ATLAS libraries. Why? I don't know. But it's supposed to run much faster with ATLAS. There are also third party libraries, like qrupdate, that can seriously speed up Octave.
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How does Octave or any other open source tool hold up against something with so many resources behind it?
It doesn't. Yes, Octave has a significant community as demonstrated by the activity of the mailing lists, but Maltab's user base is huge. It's like comparing Moon with Sun. Once you look at Matlab's advanced packages (which cost extra), Octave doesn't have much to offer against many of them. Matlab's GUI/IDE system is pretty nice and the help system is great. However, I also know tons of people in the ac
The point of most Open Source... (Score:3)
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It isn't even really meaningful to ask for the 'point' of OSS, since it (obviously) predates closed/commercial software.
So one rather should be asking what's the point of closed source commercial software? Obviously the answer is much more likely to be 'making $$$' than 'producing quality software' (the average user won't be able to tell anyway, as far as it looks good.
(Reminds me of myself long before I discovered unix -
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Hey, give him a break. French is "so complicated no one can figure it out" too, apparently!
Re:Who the fuck wants to use GNU trash? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who the fuck wants to use GNU trash? (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally I switched from Matlab to python with spyder as the GUI interface and I'll never look back.
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Spyder is awesome! Also liking Pyzo a lot.
I no longer use MATLAB for my own stuff, but my job is hooked on it, so at work I'm mostly in MATLAB.
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Re:Who the fuck wants to use GNU trash? (Score:5, Interesting)
From experience, when doing my thesis:
For my thesis, I had to implement something (DSP) which was part of my advisor's doctorate. This entailed computing a whole lot of constants for a FIR filter. My advisor had implemented this using symbolic computation, which apparently worked up to MATLAB 2007, but not any more on more recent versions. When I tried his code on the school computers, I got no answers, or the code kept on running, so I could not obtain implementation constants for this filter.
Well, symbolic computation did not work either on Octave, but I could install it on all my computers, so I did not need to either buy a version, run with an illegal version or only do my computations in school.
I solved the problem, by the way, using convolution, which was much faster, and always worked.
I suppose that the main reason for people using MATLAB professionally, is in the more advanced tools which are built on top of the basic layer, like Simulink and model-based design, which are missing in Octave. Anyone know how SciLab stacks up in this region against MATLAB?
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From experience, when doing my thesis: ...
Well, symbolic computation did not work either on Octave...
Did you try sympy [sympy.org]? I was amazed recently how well it works -- you can start with certain assumptions and derive formulas/equations from them, output latex, and finally evaluate the equations, for instance for matplotlib plotting. Then you can change your assumptions and rederive new equations / plots.
Of course it depends what kind of math you do.
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Show us. Serious request. I'm genuinely curious what Octave can do.
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- count points on elliptic and hyper elliptic curves on a distributed parallel system for cryptography research
- simulating electric motor magnetic fields, forces and temperatures on said parallel system
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What a strange question. Octave has quite an enormous userbase, perhaps not as big as R but with a heritage going back to the 1980s.
The real question is what can't you do in Octave that you'd do in Matlab: it's been quite some years since I used either, but I did have to port my Matlab code to use different or missing toolboxes so that it would run on Octave. The other big problem is a complete lack of integration with data/signal acquisition hardware which has drivers for Matlab (up to a crusty old version
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Um, I do.
Re: Graphical REPL? (Score:2, Informative)
Mathematica replacement.
http://www.mathics.org/
You are welcome.
Re:Graphical REPL? (Mathematica replacement) (Score:2)
Well, Mathematica is now free for non-commercial use on the Raspberry Pi of all things.
You could run a Raspberry emulator and run it inside that on other operating systems. But I haven't looked at the license agreement so maybe that's explicitly prohibited.
No idea how it performs, but the screenshots at Wolfram look promising.
G.
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There does exist at least one GUI front-end for it (qtoctave), but development stopped a while back and it wasn't an official part of Octave itself.