Another one of my favorites, that highlights the fact that scilab needs
a lot of polishing (in particular in the documentation & naming) to help
new or non-specialist users:
Compare the choice of name for matlab poylval() and scilab horner().
How could I know that to evaluate a polynomial I should call horner()?
If you don't know the name in advance, trying to use the help system for
"polynomial evaluation" or similar strings is not going to help you much¹.
As I can never remember the name of the horner() function, I always end
up opening the help system, browsing manually down to the Polynomials
page and parse the listing of the functions to find the one mentioning
"evaluate".
Arrrrgghhhhh....
Antoine
¹ "help polynomial" brings you to the legacy scilab API example on
polynomial! Spot on ! :-)
Le 19/09/2018 à 14:36, Stéphane Mottelet a écrit :
Hello Antoine,
Le 19/09/2018 à 13:28, antoine monmayrant a écrit :
Le 19/09/2018 à 13:04, Samuel Gougeon a écrit :
Le 19/09/2018 à 11:10, Stéphane Mottelet a écrit :
Le 19/09/2018 à 11:01, Samuel Gougeon a écrit :
Le 18/09/2018 à 19:26, philippe a écrit :
Le 17/09/2018 à 19:03, Stéphane Mottelet a écrit :
Do I have to conclude that the implementation is currently so
incoherent
that *nobody* uses integer types in Scilab (other than Scilab code
itself) ?
it's a new feature,
It would not be a new feature, but a change. This means that for
30 years that Scilab
and its int8 uint8 int16 uint16 int32 uint32 datatypes exist, the
current algebra is used,
and is used in a consistent way, even if in some aspects we may
deem that this way
is too rough. At least, it is predictable, and manageable.
And so, changing the current algebra would break all codes
implemented with encoded
integers for 30 years.
The aim of my first message was a try to clarify this point. Where
are this codes ? In scilab itself, in user codes ? To me, user
codes having been untouched since 10 years are not used any more...
I think that this position underestimates a lot users wish for
stability and reproducibility.
In a lab, in a design office, or even in the text book for a lesson
in maths or computing,
if it is not possible to get the same results when changing the
Scilab version you use,
then many users/authors will keep using the scilab version with
which the code/book has
been implemented/written. It does not prevent installing later
versions.
Even 10 years: It is the "official" lifetime of the whole Scilab 5
family. If we fairly assume that
the community have grown a lot with Scilab 5, it represents likely
almost all the existing codes.
And the Scilab 5.5.2 will be still used for (10 ?) years. Killing
the ATOMS server for 5.5.2
won't remove Scilab 5.5.2 where it is installed for existing codes,
and won't provide time
to authors to update their existing ressources.
I second that!
I started using scilab with version 2.6 and no later than this year,
I had to rerun a bunch of scripts dating back from 2004/2005 so most
probably created using scilab 3.x.
Some of them ran without any modification and some others required
minor updates to give exactly the same old result (most changes being
in the cosmetic of the graphics, not on the core results of the
simulation).
Last week, I gave to one of my colleagues a code I wrote in 2008, so
exactly 10 years ago.
So reusing a 10-years-old code that have not been used during a
decade is quite common for us ...
Please include me into "us" :-D I started using Scilab when it was
Basile, in 1989. Like you, I have a bunch of old code that I am happy
to be able to run with minor glitches.
What I meant is that too much conservatism is no good for Scilab. Have
you ever tried to put yourself into the position of a true Scilab
newcomer ? Not that easy. The long-term users who we are have
developped a particular abnegation that newcomers do not have. Each
year I meet some people who try Scilab for a while and just move on
(sometimes my own students).
Take the example of the "new graphics". The core of it is solid
(SciRenderer, and so on), but at the Scilab level... Even changing
french-inspired command names seems to be a problem (champ, fec, ...),
different interpretations of foreground/background depending on the
context, hard-wired color numbers, figure canvases denoted as "Axes",
and so on.
Please don't mistake yourself about my intentions: I am not just
playing with Scilab, I just want that people really use it instead of
Matlab (for example in my university, people teaching Signal
processing and Automatic Control still use Matlab. They just tried a
little bit, then moved on).
The particular point on integers was probably not the good point to
start with, but just an example of our reactions to eventual changes
aiming a better compatibility of Scilab with other software.
S.
Cheers, gcf
Antoine
About Scilab 6.0 itself:
The
"[^a-zA-Z0-9_](int8|uint8|int16|uint16|int32|uint32|int64|uint64)[^a-zA-Z0-9_]"
pattern
gets 3876 hits in 293 *.sci *.sce and *.tst files.
Not counting the *.xml ones, nor the hardcoded *.c *.cpp *.java ones
in which the algebra
would have to be overhauled and updated as well.
Samuel
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