Coupling of Octave with Open Office

[Horst Salzwedel]

the main software which children in school, students at universities and engineers are using is Office. In office they are using the spreadsheet to do calculations for their work.

Spreadsheets are data view programs that hide the model/algorithm and are ill suited to support our model based thinking, research and engineering.

Octave is a great SW system that is easy to use and mathematical models and algorithms are easy to implement. However, only relatively few have it on their computers.

We are trying to make model based an analysis capabilities available to all students and engineers and have developed an interface that integrates Octave into the open source Office: OpenOffice (OO). We developed a graphical interface (using some features of an earlier CtrlC derivative, SatLab) for octave with the OO graphical environment, thereby trying to overcome some of the limitations of Matlab. It is now e.g. possible to have a model in Octave, the parameters in a spread sheet, and attach the parameters in the spreadsheet to a slider. By moving the slider, the event loop of the spreadsheet triggers the reexecution in octave and you can observe how the octave graph is changing. This is really great for doing trade offs and particularly for teaching. I think what our 13 year old learned in 8 weeks in Middle School in Palo Alto about linear equations, can now be taught in 1 day.

Having Octave in OpenOffice would also make it possible to do model based approaches for all the other OpenOffice functionality and meake it really the tool of choice for teaching, research and engineering.

For this integration we only had to add a few functions to Octave to support the Open Document standard and replaced to input function of octave.

Integrating Octave into OpenOffice would make it instantly available to the 260 Million users of OpenOffice.

I have talked with the OpenOffice development team. They are very interested in this and invited us to present this to them.

Before I talk with them and pursue this further, I would like to get your opinion about this.

I have a diploma thesis (in German) of my student Tino Jungebloud, which describes the interface. I uploaded this Thesis.Diplomarbeit-jungebloud-2009-02-09-0004.pdf

Horst

[Søren Hauberg]

Hi,

Sounds like an interesting project.

søn, 08 03 2009 kl. 04:11 -0700, skrev Horst Salzwedel:
> For this integration we only had to add a few functions to Octave to support
> the Open Document standard and replaced to input function of octave.

Does that mean you have functions that allow you to read spreadsheet
data into Octave?

I while back there was a discussion on this list about creating an
interface for Octave that external applications could use. The main
focus was on having an API that external editors could use. I have some
code for using D-BUS to communicate with Octave from external
applications. Perhaps such an interface is all you would need?

> Integrating Octave into OpenOffice would make it instantly available to the
> 260 Million users of OpenOffice.

Are you talking about creating a plugin for OpenOffice.org that contains
Octave, or are you pushing to see Octave integrated into the 'core' of
OpenOffice.org?

It might be worth mentioning that the spreadsheet 'gnumeric' is
embedding R. That way they didn't have to do a lot of the statistical
stuff themselves. Perhaps they have some relevant experiences?

Søren

[Jaroslav Hajek-2]

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Horst Salzwedel
<Horst.Salzwedel@...> wrote:

>
> the main software which children in school, students at universities and
> engineers are using is Office. In office they are using the spreadsheet to
> do calculations for their work.
>
> Spreadsheets are data view programs that hide the model/algorithm and are
> ill suited to support our model based thinking, research and engineering.
>
> Octave is a great SW system that is easy to use and mathematical models and
> algorithms are easy to implement. However, only relatively few have it on
> their computers.
>
> We are trying to make model based an analysis capabilities available to all
> students and engineers and have developed an interface that integrates
> Octave into the open source Office: OpenOffice (OO). We developed a
> graphical interface (using some features of an earlier CtrlC derivative,
> SatLab) for octave with the OO graphical environment, thereby trying to
> overcome some of the limitations of Matlab. It is now e.g. possible to have
> a model in Octave, the parameters in a spread sheet, and attach the
> parameters in the spreadsheet to a slider. By moving the slider, the event
> loop of the spreadsheet triggers the reexecution in octave and you can
> observe how the octave graph is changing. This is really great for doing
> trade offs and particularly for teaching. I think what our 13 year old
> learned in 8 weeks in Middle School in Palo Alto about linear equations, can
> now be taught in 1 day.
>
> Having Octave in OpenOffice would also make it possible to do model based
> approaches for all the other OpenOffice functionality and meake it really
> the tool of choice for teaching, research and engineering.
>
> For this integration we only had to add a few functions to Octave to support
> the Open Document standard and replaced to input function of octave.
>
> Integrating Octave into OpenOffice would make it instantly available to the
> 260 Million users of OpenOffice.
>
> I have talked with the OpenOffice development team. They are very interested
> in this and invited us to present this to them.
>
> Before I talk with them and pursue this further, I would like to get your
> opinion about this.
>
> I have a diploma thesis (in German) of my student Tino Jungebloud, which
> describes the interface. I uploaded this Thesis.
> http://www.nabble.com/file/p22396824/Diplomarbeit-jungebloud-2009-02-09-0004.pdf
> Diplomarbeit-jungebloud-2009-02-09-0004.pdf
>
> Horst
>

It sounds very interesting indeed. Once again I regret my German is so poor :)
I have tinkered with Octave - OpenOffice communication (via UNO)
myself, but I haven't got remotely this far. Is this work going to be
released as free software?
I see the thesis describes both Octave embedded in OpenOffice as well
as OO used from Octave. That seem quite versatile. It also seems that
it was developed against Octave 3.0.x series. Mayeb some work will be
necessary to update the code to work with the upcoming 3.2.x series -
parts of API have changed. Stabilizing the Octave API is something
that some of us hope to happen after 3.2.x.
In any case I'll be quite interested in helping with this integration.

regards

--
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert & GNU Octave developer
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz

[Horst Salzwedel]

Hi,

I embedded my answers after your suggestions and questions below:

Søren Hauberg wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Sounds like an interesting project.
>
> søn, 08 03 2009 kl. 04:11 -0700, skrev Horst Salzwedel:
>> For this integration we only had to add a few functions to Octave to support
>> the Open Document standard and replaced to input function of octave.
>
> Does that mean you have functions that allow you to read spreadsheet
> data into Octave?

Last year we developed versions of Octave load and save to save Octave
Data in the Open Document format of OpenOffice Calc and again load those
data in Octave. Now we went the next step of developing an interface
that make Octave look like another feature of OpenOffice.org, like Calc,
Draw, Write, ... using the mechanisms of OpenOffice.org for additions to
the program. For the GUI we used the OpenOffice.org features of writing
GUIs.
>
> I while back there was a discussion on this list about creating an
> interface for Octave that external applications could use. The main
> focus was on having an API that external editors could use. I have some
> code for using D-BUS to communicate with Octave from exteral
> applications. Perhaps such an interface is all you would need?
We discussed an approach like your D-BUS as a solution and decided on
using the coupling mechanisms build into OpenOffice.org. The reason is
we want to be able to make it possible to use Octave programming
features for all components of OO, program controlled Draw pages,
program controlled interactive Impress slides that make it feasible to
give presentations that itselve meet criteria of scientific research
and being repeatable thru the Octave model.
>
>> Integrating Octave into OpenOffice would make it instantly available to the
>> 260 Million users of OpenOffice.
>
> Are you talking about creating a plugin for OpenOffice.org that contains
> Octave, or are you pushing to see Octave integrated into the 'core' of
> OpenOffice.org?
Our goal is to combine the features of OO and Octave in a way that every
child in School, every Student and every Teacher in Schools or
Universities can use it like any other Office feature for Math, Physics,
Engineering and make it feasible to introduce model based approaches in
our educational system, in order to cope with and understand the
increasing complexity of our technology.
>
> It might be worth mentioning that the spreadsheet 'gnumeric' is
> embedding R. That way they didn't have to do a lot of the statistical
> stuff themselves. Perhaps they have some relevant experiences?
Thanks, we are going to take a look at this.
>
> Søren
>
>

Horst

[Horst Salzwedel]

All the developed code is free software and will be released.

This work can only be done if other interested people around the world
get involved. Thanks for offering to support this project. Your
experience both with Octave and with UNO will certainly be very helpful.

This integration has to be made compatible with upcoming versions of
Octave and OO. Your suggestion on making it compatible with Octave 3.2.x
  helps us on compatibility with Octave.

We are currently discussing a workshop with the OO development team in
Hamburg, Germany. For us to better understand the future development of
OO and for the OO development team to understand our work and discuss
with us the future of such an OO/Octave for teaching, research and
development and set goals and requirements.

We want to first have this meeting OO, combine them with feedback from
you Octave-Maintainers, in order to set some direction for development
of the integration before releasing the code.

Tino is defending his thesis in 2 weeks. The meeting with OO will be
some time after that.

Horst



Jaroslav Hajek wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Horst Salzwedel
> <Horst.Salzwedel@...> wrote:
>> the main software which children in school, students at universities and
>> engineers are using is Office. In office they are using the spreadsheet to
>> do calculations for their work.
>>
>> Spreadsheets are data view programs that hide the model/algorithm and are
>> ill suited to support our model based thinking, research and engineering.
>>
>> Octave is a great SW system that is easy to use and mathematical models and
>> algorithms are easy to implement. However, only relatively few have it on
>> their computers.
>>
>> We are trying to make model based an analysis capabilities available to all
>> students and engineers and have developed an interface that integrates
>> Octave into the open source Office: OpenOffice (OO). We developed a
>> graphical interface (using some features of an earlier CtrlC derivative,
>> SatLab) for octave with the OO graphical environment, thereby trying to
>> overcome some of the limitations of Matlab. It is now e.g. possible to have
>> a model in Octave, the parameters in a spread sheet, and attach the
>> parameters in the spreadsheet to a slider. By moving the slider, the event
>> loop of the spreadsheet triggers the reexecution in octave and you can
>> observe how the octave graph is changing. This is really great for doing
>> trade offs and particularly for teaching. I think what our 13 year old
>> learned in 8 weeks in Middle School in Palo Alto about linear equations, can
>> now be taught in 1 day.
>>
>> Having Octave in OpenOffice would also make it possible to do model based
>> approaches for all the other OpenOffice functionality and meake it really
>> the tool of choice for teaching, research and engineering.
>>
>> For this integration we only had to add a few functions to Octave to support
>> the Open Document standard and replaced to input function of octave.
>>
>> Integrating Octave into OpenOffice would make it instantly available to the
>> 260 Million users of OpenOffice.
>>
>> I have talked with the OpenOffice development team. They are very interested
>> in this and invited us to present this to them.
>>
>> Before I talk with them and pursue this further, I would like to get your
>> opinion about this.
>>
>> I have a diploma thesis (in German) of my student Tino Jungebloud, which
>> describes the interface. I uploaded this Thesis.
>> http://www.nabble.com/file/p22396824/Diplomarbeit-jungebloud-2009-02-09-0004.pdf
>> Diplomarbeit-jungebloud-2009-02-09-0004.pdf
>>
>> Horst
>>
>
> It sounds very interesting indeed. Once again I regret my German is so poor :)
> I have tinkered with Octave - OpenOffice communication (via UNO)
> myself, but I haven't got remotely this far. Is this work going to be
> released as free software?
> I see the thesis describes both Octave embedded in OpenOffice as well
> as OO used from Octave. That seem quite versatile. It also seems that
> it was developed against Octave 3.0.x series. Mayeb some work will be
> necessary to update the code to work with the upcoming 3.2.x series -
> parts of API have changed. Stabilizing the Octave API is something
> that some of us hope to happen after 3.2.x.
> In any case I'll be quite interested in helping with this integration.
>
> regards
>