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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/doc/interpreter/ 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]]. | |||
If you're looking for small project, something more suited to start getting involved with Octave devlopment or to fill a boring evening, see instead [[short projects]] | |||
=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). (This is now partly implemented in the [http://octave.sourceforge.net/lssa/index.html lssa] package.) | *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). (This is now partly implemented in the [http://octave.sourceforge.net/lssa/index.html lssa] package.) | ||
=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) (This is also topic for [[Summer_of_Code_Project_Ideas#Incomplete_sparse_factorizations_ichol.2C_ilu|this]] GSOC project proposal) | |||
**luinc (or ilu) (This is also topic for [[Summer_of_Code_Project_Ideas#Incomplete_sparse_factorizations_ichol.2C_ilu|this]] GSOC project proposal) | |||
**<strike>bicg</strike> Moved into octave-core | |||
**<strike>gmres</strike>Moved into octave-core | |||
**lsqr | **lsqr | ||
**minres | **minres | ||
**qmr | |||
**symmlq | **symmlq | ||
=Strings= | |||
== | |||
*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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*Extend Octave functions to work on stored arrays that are too big to fit in RAM, similar to available R [http://www.bigmemory.org/ packages.] | *Extend Octave functions to work on stored arrays that are too big to fit in RAM, similar to available R [http://www.bigmemory.org/ packages.] | ||
=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. | |||
* Add map-creating capabilities similar to the Matlab [http://www.mathworks.com/help/map/functionlist.html Mapping toolbox] for inclusion in the Octave Forge [https://sourceforge.net/p/octave/mapping mapping package]. | |||
= | =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 (see below) | **Tests for various functions. Would be nice to have a test file corresponding to every function (see below) | ||
**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. | ||
We are far from even having one test for every function, so focus should be on getting the breadth of coverage first before trying to get the depth of 100% statement coverage. As of Jan 2014, 243 of 834 m-files have no tests. Some of these will be plotting functions which have demos instead, but that leaves enough functions to be an interesting project. | |||
On release 3.8.x, executing the __run_test_suite__ function will generate a file called | |||
fntests.log in your current directory with a summary of the results. It indicate at the end the functions for which no tests were found in file. An extract is posted in the [[files missing tests]] page. | |||
There also need to be tests for functions written in the C++ files, and that is a | |||
whole other project. | |||
See also [[Continuous Build#Coverage Report]]. | |||
=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. | ||
*Use non-empty identifiers in all warnings and errors issued by Octave, see | *Use non-empty identifiers in all warnings and errors issued by Octave, see {{bug|39439}}, {{bug|39434}}, {{bug|37559}}, {{bug|36861}}. | ||
=Miscellaneous= | =Miscellaneous= | ||
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*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.) | ||
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=Marketing and Community= | =Marketing and Community= | ||
* Make the | *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. | |||
*For ideas, see the [http://openoffice.apache.org/orientation/intro-marketing.html Apache Open Office Introduction to Marketing] | |||
* Help design a user or a developer survey [http://www.openoffice.org/marketing/ooocon2006/presentations/wednesday_c10.pdf] | |||
=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 | ||
** subdirectories with makefiles and top level make command of: cd <subdir> && ${MAKE}... ok as a substitute? | ** subdirectories with makefiles and top level make command of: cd <subdir> && ${MAKE}... ok as a substitute? | ||
* 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. | ||
= | =Bugs= | ||
= | There is always bugs to fix. See the [http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=octave bug tracker] is a good place to find tasks needing a hand. | ||
=Matlab compatibility= | |||
Many Octave Forge functions perform the same as functions from matlab packages. However, they often exist under a different name or have incompatible API's. Often fixing this is a matter of changing their names, swap the order of their input arguments. At least, a list of this functions would be helpful. | |||
== Missing functions == | ==Missing functions== | ||
There are certain functions present in MATLAB known to be missing in Octave. | There are certain functions present in MATLAB known to be missing in Octave. | ||
One list is provided on the source for function __unimplemented.m__, subfunction missing_functions; it can be edited in the Octave GUI or browsed at [http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/file/ | One list is provided on the source for function __unimplemented.m__, subfunction missing_functions; it can be edited in the Octave GUI or browsed at [http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/file/d63878346099/scripts/help/__unimplemented__.m#l530]. | ||
Lists are also kept for the [[Image package|Image]], [[Mapping package|Mapping]], and [[Optimization package|Optimization]] packages. | |||
[[Category:Development]] | [[Category:Development]] | ||
[[Category:Project Ideas]] | [[Category:Project Ideas]] |