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

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

[Eric S Fraga]

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.

-- 
Eric S Fraga
GnuPG: 8F5C 279D 3907 E14A 5C29  570D C891 93D8 FFFC F67D

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

[Dan Davison]

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). 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?

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

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

[Eric S Fraga]

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
GnuPG: 8F5C 279D 3907 E14A 5C29  570D C891 93D8 FFFC F67D