Re: [babel] ob-octave requires octave 3.2 or extra package

[Eric S Fraga <ucecesf@ucl.ac.uk>]

Dan Davison <dandavison7@gmail.com> writes:

> Eric S Fraga <ucecesf@ucl.ac.uk> writes:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Just a comment on requirements: ob-octave assumes the presence of the
>> =dlmwrite= function.  This is available as standard with octave 3.2 but
>> requires an extra package (=octave-io=) if you have an older version
>> (3.0.x).  All of this is for Debian systems; I cannot speak about others
>> of course.
>
> Hi Eric,
>
> Thanks. When dlmwrite is missing, is a helpful error message given?
> (When not using a session, if an error message is written to stdout,
> then it should pop up in a dedicated babel error message buffer).

yes, an error message is generated which is basically helpful enough.
However, it took a while for me to realise that the error was referring
to the octave code generated by babel to generate the output file
(i.e. the message refers to line 2 and I had no line 2 in my octave code
as it consisted of one expression).

> If the error message is not helpful, do you think we should
> programatically test for the function in octave code and display our
> own error message when it is absent?

I think this would be a good idea.

However, given that dlmwrite is available by default in octave 3.2, the
/stable/ version and one which will be the default in Debian stable
soon, it may simply be a case of extending the babel documentation to
highlight this.

> If you have time to add relevant notes to
> Worg:org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc-octave-matlab.org
> that would be much appreciated.
>
> Dan

I'll put it on my todo list... don't have much time at the moment but
hopefully next week I will.

-- 
Eric S Fraga
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