[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #60806] Usability enhancement - include usage instructions in files generated by save

[Tasos Papastylianou]

Follow-up Comment #3, bug #60806 (group octave):

Randomly bumped onto this old bug of mine. @Nik, sorry for not having replied
previously.

> Is the suggestion here that that particular header detail should be part of
the default output?

Yes

> I assume that would make no difference when 'load'ing the data, since it's
already ignoring the ## header. 

Yes; the suggestion is for 'cosmetic' reasons only.

> I assume the only headaches might be to those that are parsing the data with
something other than load

In a way, yes, but I think this misses the mark. Yes, if someone wanted to
parse this file using their own bespoke parser, they could probably do it. The
main issue here is users (typically newbies, but also non-newbies coming from
matlab) will likely see this file and not be able to instantly recognise it's
a file that should be loaded.

In UX terms, it lacks the necessary affordances that would hint to a user this
is something that can/should be 'loaded' (as opposed to a file with a .mat
extension which instantly suggests it's a loadable file).

Therefore, a header here would serve as a visual affordance to the user who
opens this file that it's something that should be loaded, rather than
'parsed'.

You might argue that the stackoverflow post posted in the first comment here
is an outlier, but, anecdotally, I've seen this happen a few times to people
new to octave.


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