Question

I’ve created a small GUI to manipulate data and recently I decided to move the database to a MySQL server. I created a Java program to bring the data back and forth and I started to notice the delay when access servers abroad.

When you run scripts through the command window Matlab displays a “busy” text in the lower left corner but not when I’m running GUIs.

So how do I know if Matlab is busy when using GUIs?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Quick example.

I run in the command window (or a script test.m)

for i = 1:100000
  a = i+i;
  disp(a);
end

The status bar says “Busy”.

When I create a GUI, with the button “Click me” that executes the same exact script. The busy sign on the status bar does not appear.

Why is this and what can I do about it? I want to be able to see if my GUI is busy or not.

Answer 1

You should be able to modify the status bar message of the main MATLAB window using the submission statusbar from Yair Altman on the MathWorks File Exchange. He discusses how it works in a post on his blog “Undocumented Matlab”.

With this utility, you should be able to put up a “Busy…” message even when MATLAB doesn’t do it automatically. Your code for the “Click me” button callback would probably look something like this:

...
statusbar(0, 'Busy...');  %# Set the status message
test;                     %# Run your function/script
statusbar(0, '');         %# Clear the status message
...