Octave PROJECTS -*- text -*-
===============
Check with bug-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu for a possibly more current
copy. Also, if you start working steadily on a project, please let
bug-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu know. We might have information that
could help you; we'd also like to send you the GNU coding standards.
This list is not exclusive -- there are many other things that might
be good projects, but it might instead be something we already have,
so check with bug-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu before you start.
---------
Numerical:
---------
* Allow sum, prod, cumsum, and cumprod to take a second argument
that specifies the dimension over which to operate.
* Merge control stuff.
* Improve logm, and sqrtm.
* Improve complex mapper functions.
* Make functions like gamma() return the right IEEE Inf or NaN
values for extreme args or other undefined cases.
* Handle complex values in fread and fwrite.
* Support for lp_solve for linear programming problems.
* Free QP solver.
* Free NLP solver.
* Support for sparse matrices.
* Fix CollocWt to handle Laguerre polynomials. Make it easy to
extend it to other polynomial types.
* Make filter faster (perhaps by calling BLAS functions).
* Add optional arguments to colloc so that it's not restricted to
Legendre polynomials.
* Fix eig to also be able to solve the generalized eigenvalue
problem, and to solve for eigenvalues and eigenvectors without
performing a balancing step first.
* Move rand, eye, xpow, xdiv, etc., functions to the matrix classes.
* Use octave_allocator for memory management in Array classes once
g++ supports static member templates.
* Implement the following functions:
-- ppval -- cross -- dot
* When constructing NLConst (and other) objects, make sure that
there are sufficient checks to ensure that the dimensions all
conform.
* Allow parameters to be passed through the call to fsolve() to the
user-supplied function for Matlab compatibility. Don't place an
upper limit on the number of arguments.
* Check matrix classes for proper handling of empty matrices.
* Force all empty matrices to be 0x0 even when other dimensions have
been speicified, for compatibility with Matlab, at least when some
preference variable is set.
* Make operations with empty matrices produce empty matrices, for
compatibility with Matlab (but only if Matlab 5 still does things
this way). For example: [1, 2] * [] ==> [].
* Should any ([]) return [] or 0? What about all ([])?
* Improve design of ODE, DAE, classes.
* Make it possible to specify a time which dassl and lsode should
not integrate past.
* Add interface to daspk (new version of dassl).
* Extend meaning of .* to include v .* M or M .* v (where v is a
column vector with the same number of rows as M) to scale rows of
M by elements of v. Similarly, if w is a row vector with as many
columns as M, then either w .* M or M .* w scales the columns of
M.
* Add support for +=, -=, etc.
* Given two vectors x and y of length m and n, implement a function
outer (x, y, f) that returns an m-by-n matrix with entries
f (x(i), y(j)). If f is omitted, multiplication is the default.
Should probably work for any vectors, not just if x is a column
vector and y is a row vector.
* Make it possible to solve b = L \ x efficiently, either by
providing an explicit function call, or by automatically
determining that L is triangular. If it is done automatically,
provide some means for determining whether Octave has actually
detected that the matrix is triangular.
* The polyfit function uses the economy QR factorization, but even
that can take a lot of time for large datasets. Consider an
option to compute the result with inv (A' * A) * A' * y or some
other faster method.d Possibly just switch to this method if the
dataset is larger than some value.
* Make QR more memory efficient for large matrices when not all the
columns of Q are required (apparently this is not handled by the
lapack code yet).
* Consider making the behavior of the / and \ operators for
non-square systems compatible with Matlab.
--------
Graphics:
--------
* Make plotting with plplot work.
* Fix interface with gnuplot to wait for gnuplot to output any text
before octave returns a prompt. Possible by implementing two
way communication between gnuplot and Octave.
* Handle gnuplot ranges correctly for parametric modes (accept 3
ranges for 2d plots and 5 ranges for 3d plots).
* Make gsave (and possibly gload) work. Implement gsave by having it
also alter the plot command to not use temporary files (perhaps
with some user-specified template for naming them) and then
sending a `save' command to gnuplot.
* It would be nice to be able to check that a plot is currently
being displayed.
* Implement clf, gcf, get, set, orient, print, close, etc. in
Matlab-compatible ways.
* Make it possible to check the current graphics terminal type.
* If possible, pass data to gnuplot without using temporary files.
* If using temporary files, delete them when gnuplot exits.
* If possible, pass binary data to gnuplot to speed things up.
* If using gnuplot, consider setting a smaller default for the
`zero' value (e.g., set zero sqrt (realmin) or something).
-------
Strings:
-------
* Improve performance of string functions, particularly for
searching and replacing.
* Provide some regex matching functions.
* Convert string functions to work on string arrays.
* Make find work for strings.
* Consider making octave_print_internal() print some sort of text
representation for unprintable characters instead of sending them
directly to the terminal. (But don't do this for fprintf!)
* Consider changing the default value of `string_fill_char' from SPC
to NUL.
* Consider making ["test", []] ==> "test", for compatibility with
Matlab, at least when some set of preferences are set.
----------------
Other Data Types:
----------------
* New types (char, short, etc.).
* 3d matrix stuff.
* Template functions for mixed-type ops.
* Stuff for arithmetic using charMatrix, intMatrix, etc.
------------------------
Graphical User Interface:
------------------------
* In an X11 or other windowing environment, allow the user to pop up
windows for menus and other purposes. A good place to start might
be Tk, as long as Tcl is avoided.
* Add a way to handle events, like alarms, mouse clicks, etc.
------------
Input/Output:
------------
* Make fread and fwrite work for complex data. Iostreams based
versions of these functions would also be nice, and if you are
working on them, it would be good to support other size
specifications (integer*2, etc.).
* Make load and save work for structures.
* Make load and save look for .mat if only given .
Potential sticky points:
- For load, if both foo and foo.mat exist, should it prefer foo
or foo.mat? Should the preference depend on the arguments to
load? I think it should only prefer .mat files if the
-mat-binary option is supplied, or if the file foo.mat exists
but the file foo does not.
- For save, should it prefer to create foo or foo.mat? Should
the preference depend on the arguments to save? Should the
default_save_format imply a default preference? I think it
should only create .mat files if it is writing Matlab
compatible files.
* Move some pr-output stuff to liboctave.
* Make the cutoff point for changing to packed storage a
user-preference variable with default value 8192.
* Save image data in binary format to save space.
* Make it possible to load other image formats (ppm, pbm, etc. would
probably be best since there are already filters to convert to
these formats from others.)
* Use HDF for binary data.
* Make ascii load and save work for Inf and NaN. (This is really a
problem with the functions for reading floats in the GNU iolib.)
* Complain if there is not enough disk space available (I think
there is simply not enough error checking in the code that handles
writing data).
* Make it possible to tie arbitrary input and output streams
together, similar to the way iostreams can be tied together.
* Allow comments in number-only data files.
-----------
Interpreter:
-----------
* Allow customization of the debug prompt.
* For the keyboard function, parse return (or quit) more
intelligently so that something like
debug> x = 1; return
will work as expected.
* Fix the parser so that
function foo ()
implicit_str_to_num_ok = 1;
'#' + 0;
endfunction
succeeds, even when implicit_str_to_num_ok is 0 at the time the
function is parsed.
* Fix the parser so that
if (expr) 'this is a string' end
is parsed as IF expr STRING END.
* For indexing operations, allow `$' to indicate the last element.
For example, b = a (3:$, 1:$-1). This means b is a, except for
its first 2 rows and last column. Note that `$' must be able to
appear in arbitrarily complex expressions, so copying the the
current implementation of `:' won't work.
* If foo.oct and foo.m both exist in the LOADPATH, Octave will
always find foo.oct, even if foo.m appears earlier in the list of
directories. This should be fixed (in the kpathsearch library) to
find the first .oct or .m file in the path, and only prefer .oct
over .m if both files are in the same directory.
* Consider grouping all preference variables in a structure instead
of further polluting the namespace. Maybe `Octave_options.xxx'?
* Rewrite functions in input.cc to do the right thing in all cases
of using readline, forced interactive behavior, echoing of input,
etc.
* Make it possible to redefine built-in variables and functions.
(Fix whatever it is that is happening with clear for built-in
variables.)
* Make it possible to check if a variable is complex.
* Consider making linspace() and logspace() return the value
corresponding to the first argument if the number of requested
points is 1.
* Consider allowing an arbitrary property list to be attached to any
variable. This could be a more general way to handle the help
string that can currently be added with `document'.
* Allow more command line options to be accessible as built-in
variables (--echo-commands, etc.).
* Allow `octave -c STRING' to execute commands from STRING then
exit.
* Make the interpreter run faster.
* Make it possible to disable or enable all warnings on an
individual basis from the command line or via some built-in
structure variable.
* Make warnings also give some indication about the location of the
code that triggers the warning.
* Warn about complex comparisons? Could just use double_value() or
matrix_value() instead of explicit conversions to real types. For
this to really be useful, some additional information must be
available to point to the location of the code that triggers the
warning.
* Consider making it possible to have arrays of structures, and some
way of indexing them.
* Allow arbitrary lower bounds for array indexing. (Watch out for
the additional conflict with zero-one style indexing.)
* Recursive problems.
* Improve the way ignore_function_time_stamp works to allow
selecting by individual directories or functions.
* Make it possible to ask exist() to only look for certain classes
of variables, functions, files, etc. rather than always looking for
everything.
* Add a command-line option to tell Octave to just do syntax
checking and not execute statements.
* Is it necessary for do_binary_op and do_unary_op to be friends of
the tree_constant class.
* Clean up symtab and variable stuff.
* Input stream class for parser files -- must manage buffers for
flex and context for global variable settings.
* make parser do more semantic checking, continue after errors when
compiling functions, etc.
* Make LEXICAL_ERROR have a value that is the error message for
parse_error() to print?
* Make it possible to clear dynamically loaded functions.
* Add a run-time alias mechanism that would allow things like
alias fun function_with_a_very_long_name
so that `function_with_a_very_long_name' could be invoked as
`fun'.
* What should is_global() return when called for built-in variables?
* Allow local changes to variables to be written more compactly than
is currently possible with unwind_protect. For example,
function f ()
local prefer_column_vectors = something;
...
endfunction
would be equivalent to
function f ()
unwind_protect
save_prefer_column_vectors = prefer_column_vectors;
prefer_column_vectors = something;
...
unwind_protect_cleanup
prefer_column_vectors = save_prefer_column_vectors;
end_unwind_protect
endfunction
* Fix all function files to check for bogus inputs (wrong number or
types of input arguments, wrong number of output arguments).
* Reduce the memory and time required to parse very large matrix
lists.
* Handle options for built-in functions more consistently.
* Too much time is spent allocating and freeing memory. What can be
done to improve performance?
* Error output from Fortran code is ugly. Something should be done to
make it look better.
* It would be nice if output from the Fortran routines could be
passed through the pager.
* Attempt to recognize common subexpressions in the parser.
* Remove the buffer size limit in octave_read() in input.cc.
* Handle arrays with more than two dimensions.
* Consider making assignment statements like
M (i_idx, j_idx) = RHS
produce the value of RHS instead of the value of M.
* Consider making it possible to specify an empty matrix with a
syntax like [](e1, e2). Of course at least one of the expressions
must be zero...
* Eliminate force_numeric and make_numeric functions.
* Is Matrix::fortran_vec() really necessary?
* print_usage() should set error_state in most cases?
* Make statements like this
foo bar baz
turn into function calls like this:
foo ("bar", "baz")
This is pretty ugly and introduces some conflicts.
* Add a command that works like bash's `builtin' command.
* Handle comments in parse trees for use with the type command.
* Make the type command handle script files too, by just reading and
printing them.
* The which and type commands should distinguish between dynamically
linked functions and built-in functions. For dynamically linked
functions, the location of the .oct file should be displayed.
* Clean up eye, eval, feval, keyboard, input, ones, zeros.
* It would be nice to have an interactive debugger.
* Make whos report total memory used by variables (and functions?).
* Rewrite whos and the symbol_record_info class. Write a built-in
function that gives all the basic information, then write who and
whos as M-files.
* Make whos work for structure elements:
prot type rows cols name
==== ==== ==== ==== ====
wd matrix m n struct.x
* Allow who to return information as a list of strings.
* On systems that support matherr(), make it possible for users to
enable the printing of warning messages.
* Make it possible to mark variables and functions as read-only.
* Provide a built-in function for applying a scalar function to an
array. Be sure to note in the manual that this is not the
preferred way to write a function that can handle vector/matrix
arguments because there is a significant overhead for function
calls. If you are really looking to make a function work for
vector/matrix arguments and you want it to run fast, you should
write it in terms of the existing vector/matrix operators as much
as possible.
* Make it possible to write a function that gets a reference to a
matrix in memory and change one or more elements without
generating a second copy of the data.
-------
History:
-------
* Add an option to allow saving input from script files in the
history list.
* The history command should accept two numeric arguments to
indicate a range of history entries to display, save or read.
* Add an option to include information about the Octave session in
the history list. Possibly a time/date stamp and the current
Octave line number, appended as a comment (users should probably
be able to control the format).
* Fix history problems -- core dump if multiple processes are
writing to the same history file?
------------------------------
Configuration and Installation:
------------------------------
* Make Octave as independent of the particular readline version as
possible.
* Add an --enable-pathsearch option to configure to make it possible
to configure and run without kpathsea.
* Make configure take more defaults from the environment. It should
definitely pay attention to CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, FFLAGS, etc.
* Should --enable-lite-kernel imply --enable-shared?
* Should --enable-dl imply --enable-shared?
* Makefile changes:
-- eliminate for loops
-- define shell commands or eliminate them
-- verify distclean
-- consolidate targets
* Make it possible to configure so that installed binaries and
shared libraries are stripped.
* Create a docs-only distribution?
------------------------------
Documentation and On-Line Help:
------------------------------
* Document new features.
-- history-search-{back,for}ward.
-- try/catch.
-- Other stuff mentioned in the NEWS file.
* Improve the Texinfo Documentation for the interpreter. It would
be useful to have lots more examples, to not have so many forward
references, and to not have very many simple lists of functions.
* The docs should mention something about efficiency and that using
array operations is almost always a good idea for speed.
* Texinfo documentation for the C++ classes.
* Support multiple info files, perhaps allowing one or more in each
directory in the LOADPATH, so that local collections of M-files
could be documented with Info.
* Figure out a good way to have functions and variables documented
in only one place.
* Improve help messages for operators and keywords in help.cc.
* Make index entries more consistent to improve behavior of `help -i'.
* Make `help -i' try to find a whole word match first.
* Allow help for local additions to be accessible with help -i.
* Make the arrow keys work in the info reader.
* Update Info to be based on the current Texinfo release.
* Should info/terminal.c include definitions for PC, BC, UP, and
ospeed on all systems?
* Clean up help stuff.
* Demo files.
* As the number of m-files with octave grows perhaps a 'Contents.m'
file for each toolbox (directory) would be appropriate so one
knows exactly what functions are in a toolbox with a quick look.
It would be best to generate information for each function directly
from the M-files, so that the information doesn't have to be
duplicated, and will remain current if the M-files change. It
would also be best to do as much of this as possible in an M-file,
though I wouldn't mind adding some basic support for listing the
names of all the directories in the LOADPATH, and the names of all
the M-files in a given directory if that is needed.
Also make it possible to recursively search for Contents files:
help dir -- Contents from dir
help dir// -- Contents from dir and all its subdirectories
help dir1/dir2 -- Contents from dir2 which is under dir1
* Some sort of blurb (2-3 pages) describing Octave in a reasonably
coherent way, where to get it etc., perhaps formatted pretty,
i.e. not just text. Maybe start with the latest Announce file.
-----
Tests:
-----
* Improved set of tests:
-- Tests for various functions. Would be nice to have a test file
corresponding to every function.
-- Tests for element by element operators:
+ - .* ./ .\ .^ | & < <= == >= > != !
-- Tests for boolean operators: && ||
-- Tests for other operators: * / \ ' .'
-- Tests from bug reports.
-- Tests for indexed assignment. Need to consider the following:
o fortran-style indexing
o zero-one indexing
o assignment of empty matrix as well as values
o resizing
* Tests for all internal functions.
-----------
Programming:
-----------
* Move toward using more stuff from standard C++ library.
* More C++/Fortran cleanups.
* It is likely that there are still some memory leaks. Hunt then down
and plug them.
* Better error messages for missing operators?
* Eliminate duplicate enums in pt-exp.cc, pt-const.cc, and ov.cc.
* Handle octave_print_internal() stuff at the liboctave level. Then
the octave_value classes could just call on the print() methods
for the underlying classes.
* As much as possible, eliminate explicit checks for the types of
octave_value objects so that user-defined types will automatically
do the right thing in more cases.
* Only include config.h in files that actually need it, instead of
including it in every .cc file. Unfortunately, this might not be
so easy to figure out.
* GNU coding standards:
-- Add a `Makefile' target to the Makefiles.
-- Comments on #else and #endif preprocessor commands.
-- Change error message format to match standards everywhere.
* Use STL stuff instead of libg++ lists, maps, and stacks.
* Eliminate more global variables.
* Encapsulate readline in a class. Include interface to stuff like
blink_matching_paren.
* Encapsulate resource stuff in a class.
* Move procstream to liboctave.
* Replace more C-style vectors with Array stuff.
* Use references and classes in more places.
* Share more code among the various *_options functions.
-------------
Miscellaneous:
-------------
* Implement some functions for interprocess communication: bind,
accept, connect, gethostbyname, etc.
* The installation process should also install octave.el. This
needs to detect the appropriate Emacs binary to use to
byte-compile the .el file. Following GNU Emacs philosophy,
installation would be into $(prefix)/share/emacs/site-lisp by
default, but it should be selectable.
* The ability to transparently handle very large files:
Juhana K Kouhia wrote:
If I have a one-dimensional signal data with the size 400
Mbytes, then what are my choices to operate with it:
* I have to split the data
* Octave has a virtual memory on its own and I don't have to
worry about the splitting.
If I split the data, then my easily programmed processing
programs will become hard to program.
If possible, I would like to have the virtual memory system in
Octave i.e. the all big files, the user see as one big array or
such. There could be several user selectable models to do the
virtual memory depending on what kind of data the user have (1d,
2d) and in what order they are processed (stream or random
access).
Perhaps this can be done entirely with a library of M-files.
* An interface to gdb.
Michael Smolsky wrote:
I was thinking about a tool, which could be very useful for me
in my numerical simulation work. It is an interconnection
between gdb and octave. We are often managing very large arrays
of data in our fortran or c codes, which might be studied with
the help of octave at the algorithm development stages. Assume
you're coding, say, wave equation. And want to debug the
code. It would be great to pick some array from the memory of
the code you're develloping, fft it and see the image as a
log-log plot of the spectral density. I'm facing similar
problems now. To avoid high c-development cost, I develop in
matlab/octave, and then rewrite into c. It might be so much
easier, if I could off-load a c array right from the debugger
into octave, study it, and, perhaps, change some [many] values
with a convenient matlab/octave syntax, similar to
a(:,50:250)=zeros(100,200), and then store it back into the
memory of my c code.
* Add a function like strptime() which is the opposite of
strftime(). A C version is apparently in recent releases of the
Linux C library.
* Add a definition to lgrind so that it supports Octave.
(See http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/support/lgrind/ for more
information about lgrind.)
------
Always:
------
* Squash bugs.
--30--