Re: [OctDev] waitbar function

[Paul K. <pki...@ja...>]

On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 02:01:23PM +0200, Quentin Spencer wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> I have written a function that approximates the functionality of the 
> Matlab waitbar function, which shows a progress bar for lengthy 
> calculations. I would like to submit it for inclusion in octave-forge, 
> but first I have a couple of questions. First is licensing--is there a 
> preferred or required license to use?

Scripts must be freely redistributable with modifications.  Either GPL, BSD
or public domain is fine.  For oct-files, the portion which interfaces with
octave must be GPL (because the octave support routines are GPL) and the
rest must be compatible with the GPL (because they are called by a GPL
program).

> 
> My second question has to do with the function itself. It is written in 
> C, to make it as fast and unobtrusive (CPU-wise) as possible, and has 
> similar syntax to the Matlab version, but with some differences because 
> it is text, rather than graphics based. Originally I used a row of ASCII 
> "#" characters across the terminal (which will look familiar to Linux 
> users who have used the rpm -ivh command), however I have since modified 
> the function to use reverse-video spaces using color-changing commands 
> such as "\033[7m" in the printf command. I like the look of it better, 
> but this raises the question of whether it will work in all 
> environments. If this is to be made available to a wide audience, it 
> needs to work in all possible environments. Are these commands 
> universally recognized by all terminal programs in use today? Is there a 
> better way to implement this that uses libraries already linked to by 
> Octave? Is there a way to detect whether smart terminals are available 
> at compile time?

You might find something in the curses library (man ncurses on my box).
You are going to need some configuration information in the form of a
configure.add and Makeconf.add.  You can model them after the ones in image
for detecting the jpeg library.  Check for both curses and ncurses, and if
neither exist fall back to '#'.  Note that octave already checks for these
because readline needs them, but readline can also fall back to termio or
termios which are no good to you.

> 
> regards,
> Quentin Spencer
> 
> 
> 
> 
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