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The list below summarizes features or bug fixes we would like to see in Octave. | The list below summarizes features or bug fixes we would like to see in Octave. if you start working steadily on a project, please let octave-maintainers@octave.org know. We might have information that could help you. You should also read the [http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Contributing-Guidelines.html#Contributing-Guidelines Contributing Guidelines chapter] in the [http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/docs.html Octave manual]. | ||
This list is not exclusive -- there are many other things that might be good projects, but it might instead be something we already have. Also, some of the following items may not actually be considered good ideas now. So please check with octave-maintainers@octave.org before you start working on some large project. | |||
GSoC students, please see [[GSoC Project Ideas]]. | |||
=Numerical= | =Numerical= | ||
*Improve logm, and sqrtm (see this thread: http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/matrix-functions-td3137935.html) | *Improve logm, and sqrtm (see this thread: http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/matrix-functions-td3137935.html) | ||
*Improve complex mapper functions. See W. Kahan, ``Branch Cuts for Complex Elementary Functions, or Much Ado About Nothing's Sign Bit (in The State of the Art in Numerical Analysis, eds. Iserles and Powell, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987) for explicit trigonometric formulae. | |||
*Improve complex mapper functions. See W. Kahan, ``Branch Cuts for Complex Elementary Functions, or Much Ado About Nothing's Sign Bit (in The State of the Art in Numerical Analysis, eds. Iserles and Powell, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987) for explicit trigonometric formulae | |||
*Make functions like gamma() return the right IEEE Inf or NaN values for extreme args or other undefined cases. | *Make functions like gamma() return the right IEEE Inf or NaN values for extreme args or other undefined cases. | ||
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*Add optional arguments to colloc so that it's not restricted to Legendre polynomials. | *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. | *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. | |||
*Improve design of ODE, DAE, classes. | *Improve design of ODE, DAE, classes. | ||
* | *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). | ||
*Evaluate harmonics and cross-correlations of unevenly sampled and nonstationary time series, as in http://www.jstatsoft.org/v11/i02 (which has C code with interface to R). | |||
=GUI/IDE= | =GUI/IDE= | ||
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**Evaluate a line of code and return the output as a string (it would be best if it could provide three strings: output, warnings and errors). | **Evaluate a line of code and return the output as a string (it would be best if it could provide three strings: output, warnings and errors). | ||
**Query defined variables, i.e. get a list of currently defined variables. Bonus points if it could tell you if anything had changed since the last time you checked the variables (could also be done with signals). | **Query defined variables, i.e. get a list of currently defined variables. Bonus points if it could tell you if anything had changed since the last time you checked the variables (could also be done with signals). | ||
* | *There is currently a GUI being developed, it's in [https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/octave/ savannah]. Further info can be found on the [http://octave-gsoc2012.blogspot.com GSoC 2012 GNU Octave GUI Development blog]. | ||
= | =Sparse Matrices= | ||
*Improve QR factorization functions, using idea based on CSPARSE cs_dmsol.m | |||
*Improve QR factorization by replacing CXSPARSE code with SPQR code, and make the linear solve return 2-norm solutions for ill-conditioned matrices based on this new code | |||
*Implement fourth argument to the sprand and sprandn, and addition arguments to sprandsym that the leading brand implements. | |||
*Sparse logical indexing in idx_vector class so that something like 'a=sprandn(1e6,1e6,1e-6); a(a<1) = 0' won't cause a memory overflow. | |||
*Sparse logical indexing in idx_vector class so that something like | |||
*Other missing Functions | *Other missing Functions | ||
**<strike>symmmd</strike> (Superseded by symamd) | |||
**<strike>colmmd</strike> (Superseded by colamd) | |||
**cholinc (or ichol) | |||
**<strike>bicg</strike> Moved into octave-core | |||
**<strike>gmres</strike>Moved into octave-core | |||
**lsqr | **lsqr | ||
**minres | **minres | ||
**qmr | |||
**symmlq | **symmlq | ||
=Strings= | |||
*Improve performance of string functions, particularly for searching and replacing. | |||
*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 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!) | ||
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*Make it possible to tie arbitrary input and output streams together, similar to the way iostreams can be tied together. | *Make it possible to tie arbitrary input and output streams together, similar to the way iostreams can be tied together. | ||
* | * Support to write multi-page images with {{codeline|imwrite}}. This is done by setting the {{codeline|writemode}} to append. There are many other options to be set. This and many other options shouldn't be too hard to implement, since it's wrapped around GraphicsMagick. | ||
=Interpreter= | =Interpreter= | ||
*Allow customization of the debug prompt. | *Allow customization of the debug prompt. | ||
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if (expr) 'this is a string' end | if (expr) 'this is a string' end | ||
is parsed as IF expr STRING END. | is parsed as IF expr STRING END. | ||
*Clean up functions in input.cc that handle user input (there currently seems to be some unnecessary duplication of code and it seems overly complex). | *Clean up functions in input.cc that handle user input (there currently seems to be some unnecessary duplication of code and it seems overly complex). | ||
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*Too much time is spent allocating and freeing memory. What can be done to improve performance? | *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. | *Error output from Fortran code is ugly. Something should be done to make it look better. | ||
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*Use nanosleep instead of usleep if it is available? Apparently nanosleep is to be preferred over usleep on Solaris systems. | *Use nanosleep instead of usleep if it is available? Apparently nanosleep is to be preferred over usleep on Solaris systems. | ||
*<strike>Per the following discussion, allow bsxfun style singleton dimension expansion as the default behavior for the builtin element-wise operators: http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Vector-approach-to-row-margin-frequencies-tp1636361p1636367.html</strike> This is done. <strike>Now [[User:JordiGH|I]] just have to document it.</strike> This is done too! | |||
* Start the development of classdef (already underway) | |||
= | =Graphics= | ||
*Correctly handle case where DISPLAY is unset. Provide --no-window-system or --nodisplay (?) option. Provide --display=DISPLAY option? How will this work with gnuplot (i.e., how do we know whether gnuplot requires an X display to display graphics)? | |||
* Implement transparency and lighting in OpenGL backend(s). A basic implementation was available in [http://octave.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/octave/trunk/octave-forge/extra/jhandles/ JHandles]. This needs to be ported/re-implement/re-engineered/optimized in the C++ OpenGL renderer of octave. | |||
* Implement a Cairo-based renderer for 2D-only graphics, with support for PS/PDF/SVG output (for printing). | |||
* On 'imagesc' plots, report the matrix values also based on the mouse position, updating on mouse moving. | |||
* | * Create a "getframe" function that receives a a graphics handle and returns a 3D matrix from the graphics window associated with that handle. | ||
=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. | |||
*Avoid writing the history file if the history list has not changed. | |||
*Avoid permission errors if the history file cannot be opened for writing. | |||
* | *Fix history problems — core dump if multiple processes are writing to the same history file? | ||
=Configuration and Installation= | |||
* | *Split config.h into a part for Octave-specific configuration things (this part can be installed) and the generic HAVE_X type of configure information that should not be installed. | ||
* | *Makefile changes: | ||
**eliminate for loops | |||
**define shell commands or eliminate them | |||
**consolidate targets | |||
* | *Make it possible to configure so that installed binaries and shared libraries are stripped. | ||
*Create a docs-only distribution? | |||
*Better binary packaging and distribution, especially on Windows. | |||
*Octave Emacs mode needs maintenance. | |||
=Documentation and On-Line Help= | |||
*Document new features. | |||
* | *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 | *The docs should mention something about efficiency and that using array operations is almost always a good idea for speed. | ||
* | *Doxygen documentation for the C++ classes. | ||
* | *Make index entries more consistent to improve behavior of `help -i'. | ||
* | *Make `help -i' try to find a whole word match first. | ||
*Clean up help stuff. | |||
* | *Demo files. | ||
* | *Document C++ sources, to make it easier for newcomers to get into writing code. | ||
*Flesh out this wiki | |||
=Tests= | =Tests= | ||
*Improved set of tests: | *Improved set of tests: | ||
**Tests for various functions. Would be nice to have a test file corresponding to every function | **Tests for various functions. Would be nice to have a test file corresponding to every function. | ||
**Tests for element by element operators: + - .* ./ .\ .^ | & < <= == >= > != ! | **Tests for element by element operators: + - .* ./ .\ .^ | & < <= == >= > != ! | ||
**Tests for boolean operators: && || | **Tests for boolean operators: && || | ||
**Tests for other operators: * / \ ' .' | **Tests for other operators: * / \ ' .' | ||
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**Tests for all internal functions. | **Tests for all internal functions. | ||
=Programming= | |||
* | *Add support for listeners (addlistener, dellistener, etc) on the C++ side. | ||
*C++ namespace for Octave library functions. | |||
*Better error messages for missing operators? | *Better error messages for missing operators? | ||
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*Share more code among the various _options functions. | *Share more code among the various _options functions. | ||
=Miscellaneous= | =Miscellaneous= | ||
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*:If I split the data, then my easily programmed processing programs will become hard to program. | *: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). | *: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: | *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 developing, 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 <code>a(:, | *: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 developing, 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 <code>a(:,50:250)=zeros(100,200)</code>, and then store it back into the memory of my c code. | ||
*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.) | *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.) | ||
* | *Make the website prettier. Maybe a new design, maybe a more "corporate" design (if we're heading down the "paid support for Octave" path. | ||
* | *Agora -- website for rapid collaboration related to GNU Octave. Talk to [[User:JordiGH|Jordi]] | ||
* | *Move [http://octave.sourceforge.net/ Octave-Forge] to [http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/octave/ Savannah] so everything is hosted in the same place. | ||
=Performance= | =Performance= | ||
* | *A profiler for Octave would be a very useful tool. And now we have one! But it really needs a better interface. | ||
=Packaging= | |||
* create a system that allows packages to deprecate functions as in core. Possibilities are: | * create a system that allows packages to deprecate functions as in core. Possibilities are: | ||
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* get pkg to resolve dependencies automatically by downloading and installing them too | * get pkg to resolve dependencies automatically by downloading and installing them too | ||
* allow to download and install multiple versions of the same package | * allow to download and install multiple versions of the same package | ||
* make the package just a bit more verbose by default | * make the package just a bit more verbose by default | ||
* make pkg a little more like apt-get | * make pkg a little more like apt-get | ||
* make pkg support more than one src directory | * make pkg support more than one src directory | ||
* make pkg able to supply extra configure and make flags, useful for distributions, including -j for make | |||
* make pkg able to supply extra configure and make flags, useful for distributions, including -j for make | |||
=Preferences= | =Preferences= | ||
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* Searching the m-files for use of {{Codeline|persistent}} should turn up other opportunities to use preferences. | * Searching the m-files for use of {{Codeline|persistent}} should turn up other opportunities to use preferences. | ||
= | =Always= | ||
*Squash bugs. | |||