Sinabro

So, I tracked down the problem with plotting. It turns out it’s my configuration file, or rather, more precisely, one of my custom functions.

The problem persisted even when I compiled GNU Octave by hand (and the gnuplot, to be sure), but when I removed .octaverc, everything worked fine.

Working backward from that fact, all I know is that some script in my ~/octave must be clobbering a system function, possibly used by plot command.

I suppose the most mysterious thing is … I have another computer that has nearly identical setup (even the same ~/octave!) and everything works fine there, too! Figures …

I think I’ll be switching to Python for scientific computing anyways. I think I finally found a way to do least-squares fit in Python (http://linuxgazette.net/115/andreasen.html) relatively quickly (no, the version in ScientificPython is way too slow, compared to, e.g. GNU Octave). In a way, the main limitation I see for GNU Octave is its MATLAB compatibility, because MATLAB compatibility means both the lack of object-oriented programming and its brain-dead syntax.