Re: [OctDev] Ode23s

[c. <kin...@ti...>]

On 6 Sep 2012, at 09:13, c. wrote:

> 
> On 5 Sep 2012, at 23:31, davide prandi wrote:
> 
>> Well, it works. Thanks to everyone! I'll load it on sourceforge as soon as possible, if someone wants to check/test it I'll be happy.
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Davide
> 
> Davide,
> Some suggestions for your next version:
> 
> - the copyright notice is incomplete. You can look at other 
>   files in Octave Forge for examples, you can browse other packages' sorce code from here:
>   octave.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/octave/trunk/octave-forge/
> 
>   In particular it should be at the top of the file, before the function signature and it 
>   should start with "%% Copyright (C)", Octave looks for this string to understand that it
>   is a copyright notice and not part of the help text.
> 
> - If you have no special reason for doing otherwise I'd reccomend using GPL "version 3 or later" as the 
>  license.
> 
> - In order to make testing easier you may want to add some automatic tests to your file, 
>  these are code blocks (usually placed at the end of the file) commented with the special symbol "%!"
>  and starting with "%!test". If your function contains such automatic tests, the command  "test ode23s"
>  will run all the tests and report the results as PASS or FAIL.
>  See here for more details: 
>  http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Test-Functions.html#Test-Functions
>  A good test for your function would be to check the order of convergence and stability of the method
>  on a linear problem for which an exact solution is known.
> 
> -  If you write examples/test that contain graphical output, it's better to include them as demos rather than tests.
>   In your case it would make sense to plot the exact and numerical results for comparison.
> 
> - You should start adding a documentation string, see here for tips about how to write such string:
>  http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Documentation-Tips.html#Documentation-Tips
> 
> - When you upload the next version to the tracker also send a message to this mailing list asking for comments
>  as almost nobody monitors the tracker. You might also want to cc the maintainer of "odepkg", Thomas Treichl, 
>  as I think that package is the best place where to place your function.
> 
> Welcome to Octave and keep up the good work,
> Carlo


Another comment:
 
the correct way to check whether a variable is empty is not

if size(options.RelTol)~=size([])

instead use

if (! isempty (options.RelTol))

to make the check more robust you could also check whether the field exists before checking for its size

if (if isfield ("options", "RelTol") && ! isempty (options.RelTol))

HTH,
c.