Mercurial > octave
view WWW/readme.html @ 2339:8d7454ead97e
[project @ 1996-07-24 07:18:22 by jwe]
author | jwe |
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date | Wed, 24 Jul 1996 07:19:06 +0000 |
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<!doctype html public "-//IETF//DTD HTML Strict//EN"> <html> <head> <title> Octave -- a high-level language for numerical computations </title> </head> <h3>Copyright (C) 1996 John W. Eaton</h3> <h4>Overview</h4> <p> 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. </p> <p> 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. </p> <p> 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. </p> <h4>Availability</h4> <p> The latest released version of Octave is always available via anonymous ftp from <a href="ftp://ftp.che.wisc.edu/pub/octave"> ftp.che.wisc.edu</a> in the directory /pub/octave. Complete source and binaries for several popular systems are available. </p> <h4>Installation and Bugs</h4> <p> 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 is known to compile on the following systems: </p> <ul> <li>SPARCstation 2 SunOS 4.1.2</li> <li>IBM RS/6000 AIX 3.2.x</li> <li>DECstation 5000/240 Ultrix 4.2a</li> <li>i486 Linux</li> <li>i486 NetBSD (without IEEE floating point support)</li> <li>HP 9000/7xx HP-UX 9.x</li> <li>SGI Irix 4.04</li> <li>NeXT NeXTStep ?</li> </ul> <p> See the notes in the files INSTALL and INSTALL.OCTAVE for more specific installation instructions, including directions for installing Octave from a binary distribution. </p> <p> The file BUGS contains a recommended procedure for reporting bugs, as well as a list of known problems. </p> <h4>Binary Distributions</h4> <p> Binary copies of Octave are now distributed for several popular Unix systems. To save disk space, the complete source code for Octave is no longer included with the binary distribution, but should be available in the same place as the binaries. If not, please contact bug-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu. </p> <p> The file INSTALL.OCTAVE contains specific installation instructions, for installing Octave from a binary distribution. </p> <h4>Implemenation</h4> <p> 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. </p> <p> 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. </p> <p> The library of C++ classes may also be useful by itself. </p> <h4>Author</h4> <p> <a href="http://www.che.wisc.edu/~jwe">John W. Eaton</a><br> <a href="mailto:jwe@bevo.che.wisc.edu"><i>jwe@bevo.che.wisc.edu</i></a><br> University of Wisconsin<br> Department of Chemical Engineering<br> Madison WI 53719 </body> </html>