Octave -- a high-level language for numerical computations. Copyright (C) 1992, 1993 John W. Eaton Last updated: Wed Feb 10 00:54:18 1993 Overview -------- Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically. Octave is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version. Octave is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the file COPYING for more details. Installation and Bugs --------------------- Octave requires approximately 25MB of disk storage to unpack and install (significantly less if you don't compile with debugging symbols). In order to build Octave, you will need a current version of g++, libg++, and GNU make. Octave has been compiled and tested with g++-2.3.3 and libg++-2.3 on a SPARCstation 2 running SunOS 4.1.2, an IBM RS/6000 running AIX 3.2, and a DECstation 5000/240 running Ultrix 4.2a. See the notes in the files INSTALL and INSTALL.OCTAVE for more specific installation instructions. The file BUGS contains a recommended procedure for reporting bugs, as well as a list of known problems. Implemenation ------------- Octave is being developed with the Free Software Foundation's make, bison (a replacement for YACC), flex (a replacement for lex), gcc/g++, and libg++ on a SPARCstation II and a DECstation 5000/240. It should be possible to install it on any machine that runs GCC/G++. It may also be possible to install it using other implementations of these tools, but it will most certainly require much more work. Do yourself a favor and get the GNU development tools, either via anonymous ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu or by writing the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. The underlying numerical solvers are currently standard Fortran ones like Lapack, Linpack, Odepack, the Blas, etc., packaged in a library of C++ classes (see the files in the libcruft and liboctave subdirectories). If possible, the Fortran subroutines are compiled with the system's Fortran compiler, and called directly from the C++ functions. If that's not possible, they are translated with f2c and compiled with a C compiler. Better performance is usually achieved if the intermediate translation to C is avoided. The library of C++ classes may also be useful by itself. ----------------------------------------- Linux notes: Parma, May 21st 1993, This is the binary code for octave-0.71.1, compiled under GCC 2.3.3 for linux. The code here inside has to bi distributed in the subdirs as it appears, so /usr/local/bin/, /usr/local/lib/octave /usr/mam/man1/. I hope to have done everything correct.. Just one file is missed in the distribution, and that is octaverc, the file that is automatically executed at sturtup. You have to make the principal one in /usr/local/lib/octave/ but also you can make a .octaverc to be held in each user home directory and that can be personalized by the user. If you find something wrong in this executable, that is not reported by BUGS, please write both to me, both to the bugs report site. Octave suppose to find gnuplot to manage with graphics, so you must have it, by the way that is also a very nice program even stand alone. (last release known by me is 3.3). Good work with octave, Best Regards :) Romolo Manfredini EMAIL: romolo@prix1.fis.unipr.it romolo@ursamajor.eng.unipr.it