Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Octave and Gnuplot Coming To Android

Posted by Soulskill on from the for-all-your-mobile-steam-cycle-efficiency-needs dept.

New submitter MathIsTasty writes "Recently, it was announced on the Octave-maintainers list that a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to bring Matlab style numerical computations and graphing to Android via a 'more than' port of Octave and gnuplot. While I doubt it will be as successful as some recent games on Kickstarter, is this a reasonable way to fund free software development? Now, we just have to worry about people working on simulating solar irradiation while driving. Here is a good blog post about the project."

5 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Too bad it wasn't SciPy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have been a long time Matlab, but have always been frustrated with licensing issues etc.
    So I have tried replacing Matlab with Octave and SciLab a couple of times, but they both feels more cumbersome to use.
    About a year ago, I tried Python with the modules Numpy and SciPy, and it just completely smokes the competitors. It is much more enjoyable to work with, so people should really give it a go, it if hard work to get used to something new, but with Python, you will not be disappointed. You can get some nice inspiration of what is possible in the 3rd party documentation SciPy-Lectures:

    http://scipy-lectures.github.com/

  2. Octave Clone for Android already there by asnelt · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is already Addi: http://code.google.com/p/addi/

  3. my N900 runs R, numpy, matplotlib by Kludge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now, we just have to worry about people working on simulating solar irradiation while driving.

    Been there. I have an N900 that runs R, numpy, matplotlib. Handy for computing when I can't sit on the bus or subway.

  4. Re:... that cost at least $50,000 ? by necro81 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just because the disparate software is free doesn't mean getting them to work together requires zero work.

    "I know guys: Octave runs natively in Linux, and Android is just Linux. This will be totally easy! In fact, I'll download the source files tonight, whip up a custom build script with one hand while downing a Mountain Dew with the other, and have it done tomorrow."

    But as any Android developer will tell you, taking something that runs on a Linux desktop and getting it on Android - making it function properly, getting it to look good, and getting it to interface with the Android UI - it really hard, tedious work. Testing on all the different Android platforms out there alone could keep someone occupied for a year. Is it really so outlandish to ask for some money for the work? $50k will get you a quality software engineer for about half a year (salary + benefits + office overhead). It's not that much.

    I may just donate for the hell of it - and I use iOS and Matlab on a daily basis.

  5. N900? by Evil+Pete · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wait, what? I had gnuplot and octave on my N900. Two years ago. Gees, bit slow there android.

    --
    Bitter and proud of it.