Comments on: LazyWeb on the File Exchange

By: J Lister

J Lister — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:32:26 +0000

Doug,

Nice idea. I am trying to hack suptitle for this LazyWeb request myself, but if anyone else wants to take a stab at it, here goes…

I need a function similar to suptitle, but what I really want is to add a visable header and footer to any plot that I make. It must accept multiple lines of text (a cell array) for both header and footer. It also must play well with the file exchange entry called addaxis and plots with multiple subplots.

Thanks,
Jonathan

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:44:03 +0000

DanK, are you still interested in a dialogue for running deployed programs in batch mode?

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 03:34:07 +0000

Doug,

OK, in response to your LazyWeb request above, I just submitted a “poker hand ranker” function to the file exchange. I’m not a big poker player, but solving games in ML is fun. I also must admit that the allure of a ML t-shirt is compelling.

I did some basic range testing on the function (rankp.m) to make sure that the worst hand of one type (e.g. full house) will not score worse than the best hand of the next lowest type (e.g. flush). Tell me if it is what you were thinking of in the request.

Best,
Rob

By: DanK

DanK — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:23:47 +0000

Dear Lazyweb,
What I would love is a one function that could be called in one line, which does nothing if the program is being run in MatLab, but only when it is running in deployed mode. The reason for this is I have a bunch of routines where I often want to run them multiple times, without having to launch the exe each time. So I would like the wrapper function to pop up a small dialog that asks the user: “Do you want to run the function {name of function routine was called from} or exit?” and have two buttons. If the user clicks the run button, it should be just as if the original function was run by launching the (unaltered) .exe. The dialog then goes dormant until the program is finished running, at which point it regains focus and asks: “Run again?” When the exit button is clicked, all the windows get closed, and the executable shuts down. This would be very useful to my co-workers who may have to run batches of data, that can’t be pre-determined. As a bonus, it would be very nice if this dialog has a string field and captures the output from a disp() command, instead of letting it go to the dos window.

In my own defense, I have tried to achieve this and it only works, very so-so.

Thanks if anybody wants to take this one up.

Dan

By: Rich Quist

Rich Quist — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:04:36 +0000

Sounds like a fabulous idea. My “Fill Page” File Exchange submission http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/loadFile.do?objectId=16566&objectType=FILE was inspired by a blog entry I came across one day…

Sometimes people don’t realize that some code they’ve already written (or know how to easily write) can be useful in solving a more general problem.

By: Matt Whitaker

Matt Whitaker — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:22:50 +0000

Why not, Urs
I see it this way:
1) Poorly described problems are unlikely to get a response.
2) Overly complex problems are unlikely to get a response unless the issue is of great interest to someone in which case it may provide them with the motivation to write the code. Usually a well worded problem description is exactly what you need to get started.
3) It may start collaborations between individuals who did not realize they had common problems/interests.

I wrote the submission earlier because I have a lot of similar code and this particular bit of code may come in handy. I wouldn’t look at the poker hand problem because I know nothing about poker but Ned Gully’s post led to an interesting article and I might think about that at some point.

More interaction is hardly ever a bad idea.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:20:10 +0000

Urs,

Why do you hope that?

I am always looking for suggestions for more videos http://blogs.mathworks.com/pick/category/video/ to make, or code to write to help out MATLAB users. You have an impressively long list of contributions to the File Exchange http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/loadAuthor.do?objectType=author&objectId=10786
I can only assume that some of those came about from discussions from other MATLAB users.

Doug

By: Urs (us) Schwarz

Urs (us) Schwarz — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:25:06 +0000

doug
i REALLY hope you are NOT serious about this…
urs

By: Ned Gulley

Ned Gulley — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:41:45 +0000

Dear LazyWeb:

I really like the paper “The End of the Rainbow? Color Schemes for Improved Data Graphics” by A. Light and P.J. Bartlein (see http://geography.uoregon.edu/datagraphics/EOS/Light&Bartlein_EOS2004.pdf). In it, the authors describe some pitfalls of colormap design, and then they provide some nice example colormaps of well-designed colormaps.

Please make me a file that creates the five colormaps shown in Figure 2. Each colormap should take an input that will let me make it arbitrarily long (just like HSV or GRAY in the MATLAB toolbox). Naming colormaps is tricky. Maybe you can give them names like DivergingRedBlue or SingleHuePurple.

Thanks,
Ned

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:20:41 +0000

Matt,

Thank you! This file was created faster than I would have ever guessed (three hours). I have already made use of this in a project I was working on. Here is the link to the file Matt made.

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/loadFile.do?objectId=17505&objectType=FILE

I will work up a blog post about it soon, and Helen will be in touch to get you the promised MATLAB t-shirt and other goodies!

Doug