How do I start Octave GUI from zip file install

Question

I downloaded windows 32 zip file version of Octave from here

I do not want to use the installer to fully install Octave and would prefer to use it through the zip file extraction

I can start octave in the command line from

octave-4.4.1-w32\octave-4.4.1-w32\bin\octave.bat  

This gives me the octave interpreter in the Windows cmd prompt, but I thought octave had it's own GUI and IDE similar to matlab

How do I start this IDE from the zip file install version of octave? Is the GUI IDE present in the zip file version?

Answer 1

Octave for Microsoft Windows says (paraphrased):

For the zip archives, the user should extract the file content to a directory on the harddrive (such as C:\Octave). Manual shortcuts can then be created to either the octave.bat or octave.vbs files in the main installation directory.

Note that starting with Octave 4.4.0, the shortcuts will no longer start the graphical user interface by default. The user needs to add --force-gui to any manual shortcuts to start Octave with the GUI.  (Right-click on the shortcut, select Properties, and add --force-gui to the end of the Target field.)

For Visual flow see below screenshots:

1. Create shortcut
2. Move it to your desired location.  (Here I moved it to where a file is extracted.)
3. Right-click on shortcut and click on "Properties".
4. Finally add --force-gui in the "Target" field and click "OK".  That's it.  Now open the shortcut and you'll be able to run Octave in the GUI.