Suggested .octaverc for GNU Octave

April 27, 2022

Octave uses startup.m persistent user settings like Matlab. To keep Matlab compatibility, put Octave-specific startup commands and plotting defaults into ~/.octaverc, which sets default parameters for all GNU Octave sessions.

suppress_verbose_help_message(1)
page_output_immediately(1)
page_screen_output(0)
crash_dumps_octave_core(0)
sigterm_dumps_octave_core(0)
sighup_dumps_octave_core(0)

if isfile('~/Documents/MATLAB/startup.m')
  source('~/Documents/MATLAB/startup.m')
endif

*_dumps_*: eliminate nuisance octave-workspace files that appear when Octave is Ctrl+c exited or crashes.
page_output_immediately(1): make Octave print immediately like Matlab.
if exist: use startup.m file like Matlab.

Set plot defaults: useful for HiDPI systems, control Octave default plot text size of axes and titles, useful for HiDPI systems by adding to “~/.octaverc”:

set(0, "defaultaxesfontsize", 16)
set(0, "defaultlinelinewidth", 2)

adjust 16 to produce the most appealing text labels in:

axes tick labels
legend key
title text

defaultline is the root category for lines, so defaultlinelinewidth is not a typo.

Speedup Octave start (without GUI): don’t autoload Octave packages