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<html> <pre> 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 <file>.mat if only given <file>. 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 * 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<T> 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 <kouhia@nic.funet.fi> 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 <fnsiguc@weizmann.weizmann.ac.il> 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-- </pre> </html>