Path: news.mathworks.com!not-for-mail
From: Brian Arnold <barnold@mathworks.com>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: Matlab 7.4 OSX
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:50:25 -0400
Organization: The MathWorks, Inc.
Lines: 73
Message-ID: <46852A41.2090004@mathworks.com>
References: <ef53b75.0@webcrossing.raydaftYaTP> <464DC028.3000301@mathworks.com> <ef53b75.2@webcrossing.raydaftYaTP> <ef53b75.3@webcrossing.raydaftYaTP> <ef53b75.4@webcrossing.raydaftYaTP> <ef53b75.5@webcrossing.raydaftYaTP>
NNTP-Posting-Host: arnoldb-mac1.dhcp.mathworks.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Trace: fred.mathworks.com 1183132225 17960 144.212.108.155 (29 Jun 2007 15:50:26 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: news@mathworks.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:50:25 +0000 (UTC)
To: sgls@ucsd.edu,  bernhard.wistawel@nt.tuwien.ac.at,  timo@brown.edu
User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (Macintosh/20070509)
In-Reply-To: <ef53b75.5@webcrossing.raydaftYaTP>
Xref: news.mathworks.com comp.soft-sys.matlab:416467


Hi,

I appreciate this thread, keep your comments coming. 

I'd like to clarify one thing: we will continue to support the CLI 
interface on OS X and remote connections to and from OS X servers and 
clients.  This is also critical for MATLAB on the Mac platform working 
with Distributed Computing Toolbox (which runs -nodisplay).

What's not as clear is the role of X11 interfaces on the Mac, and why 
X11 is so important to some customers.  We continue to receive 
overwhelming feedback regarding how "non-native" the X11-based UIs are, 
how poor the integration is with the rest of the OS, and customer 
dissatisfaction and loss of productivity.  As a result, the highest 
priority for MathWorks Mac developers is to improve the user experience 
and integration on the Mac platform.

If you simply can't live without an X11 connection, what is it about 
MATLAB in X11 in particular that is critical to your workflow, and what 
are the most important things that are currently missing with the Mac 
X11 connection?  Be very specific.

For Tiger (OS X 10.4), you could enable fast user switching and running 
a multi-user VNC host, such as Vine Server.  So, users who only needs 
the CLI can use a low-bandwidth rsh or ssh connection, while users who 
need to take advantage of MATLAB Desktop features or Toolbox UIs (such 
as SimBiology) can connect to your server using a VNC client (such as 
Chicken of the VNC), and have their own virtual desktop (not the 
logged-in user's), with full desktop integration.  This seems to me like 
a much friendlier alternative to X11, and lets users -nojvm with R2007a 
as well.  Is this a viable alternative for some of you?

Apple's remote desktop energy in Leopard (OS X 10.5) is currently 
focused on integrated screen sharing from the Finder, and "Back to my 
Mac" for anywhere-access to a Mac, which Steve Jobs made public during 
his Apple WWDC 2007 keynote presentation.  These are other alternatives 
that you may choose to support on your servers as well, once Leopard 
becomes available.

You can find out more about the integrated screen sharing and "Back to 
my Mac" here:

< http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/finder.html >
< http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc07/ >

So, we could be giving customers a significantly better native Mac 
experience if we supported MATLAB UIs more natively, and we could be 
taking advantage of Apple innovations as well.  To work towards both a 
native Mac experience and an X11 experience would require us to split 
our very limited Mac resources, and further delay our progress.  Is that 
really desirable, or are there other alternatives?

Let me know your thoughts,

- Brian

Brian Arnold
Mac Developer
The MathWorks, Inc.

Timothy O'Keefe wrote:
> Agreed.
>
> I'm not necessarily concerned about being able to render X-window
> graphics on OSX, but I'm pretty sure others do rely on this. I
> already think it's bad that you can open a remote Matlab IDE on OSX
> as you can on Linux, but I know what a pain X11 is.
>
> On a more personal note, I would be extremely upset if MathWorks
> moved to completely abandon the CLI interface *overall* within OSX's
> Matlab. What am I going to do with this Mac cluster now? Serve
> websites? ;)
>