Octave invitation

Re : Octave and the real world -- Will Lau
Posted by Hannes Frischat , Jul 03,2000,06:49	Post Reply	Top of Thread	Forum

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When the contest was scheduled we tried to find out how to deal with Octave.

As Octave posesses 8 symbols for much more letters it has to use an internal dictionary for interpretation which word is meant. So it is very advantageous within Octave if a word is in the database:

(1) Autocompletion of words that are recognized before their end.
(2) Lower probability of typing errors - a wrong letter may have the same of the 12 symbols as the right one.

On the other hand we would expect a significant slowdown once a word is not in the database:
(3) Any new word would have to be entered in "single letter mode" with up to 3 symbols for each letter.

Because we wanted to invite the Octave people we told them, OK, use the dictionary without taking advantage of the autocompletion. So they should just write every word until the end - and also we prepared an extra category for them to submit entries with autocompletion (not used until today).

Maybe one could think allowing a dictionary was generous but there was no other way to let them participate - besides restricting them to their single letter mode which appeared to be too hard.

We now hope that there will be more entries from their side also from people that are not related with e-Acute.

Hannes Frischat
Dom Perignon II Speed Contest Moderator