Re: Octave Help Mode?

[Christian Herenz <herenz@physik.hu-berlin.de>]

David Hansen schrieb:
> On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:42:41 +0200 Christian Herenz wrote:
>>> It's working here but I use a developer version of emacs.  Is C-h S
>>> working?
>> I am not at my computer at the moment, so I cannot test this. However,
>> I noted yesterday, when browsing the GNU Octave Info File lots of
>> Nodes which are shown in the index are actually not present. Is this
>> right, or does openSUSE ship a wrong info file. Sorry, this tends to
>> be more an octave question, but since I am using it inside Emacs, I
>> ask here.
> 
> This seems to be suses fault.  With Debians GNU Octave, version 3.0.0
> the manual looks pretty complete here.

I installed now from SUSEs Science Repo Octave 3.0.0, and now everything works 
as expected. Seems to be a bug in the default octave package which is shipped 
with 10.2.

>>> Maybe adjust INFO_PATH but that sounds like a Debilian bug.
>>>
>> Do you mean the shell-variable INFO_PATH, which I would export in my
>> .profile (or simialar), or do you mean something emacs-specific?
> 
> The shell variable
> 
>> As stated above, just entering "info octave" in a normal terminal
>> works fine.
> 
> Hmm, you can try to set `Info-additional-directory-list' then, but this
> actually looks more like an Emacs bug to me.

This is acutally what happens on the debian-machine I occasionally have to work 
on. But it seems, that sarge ships a rather old version of octave: GNU Octave, 
version 2.1.73. So would be nice, if a sarge user could report on this issue?

I would contact the sysadmin at our university, but it seems that they are 
playing a little bit the devils-advocate by promoting heavily Matlab (they won't 
give me full points, cause I solve my exercises in octave-code rather than with 
matlab (even pointing out the differences)... really pi**** about this atm, but 
this NEEDS to be discussed somewhere else (hints?))


> 
>> The thing is, I really want to work with octave, and I just think it
>> is good to look something up directly inside the environment I am
>> doing my octave stuff (i.e. emacs), however since I am fan of printed
>> works I ordered via my libary today the "GNU Octave Manual" by
>> J.W. Eaton (Network Theory Ltd.). Since it is not present in my
>> home-libary I have to wait a little bit (cause its inter-libary loan),
>> but I will fill out some forms today, that more "official" printed GNU
>> Documentation will be available in our libary soon. At present, there
>> is actually none :(
> 
> You can also produce pdf or ps from the texinfo sources if that is good
> enough for you.

Yeah, and I could print that out. But I really like to have a book. Maybe I am a 
bit old-fashioned in that way, but actually a browsing the information in a book 
than in a pile of printed paper (or even worse, a pdf on the screen) seems to be 
more natural to me. But just for looking up things quickly, the octave-help is best.

Greets,
Christian