Octave -- a high-level language for numerical computations.



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.



Used Compiler and Libraries
---------------------------

Octave for OS/2 is compiled using EMX-GCC 0.9C (with EMXFIX04) and
libg++ 2.7.2.

The fortran routines are translated to C using f2c.



Binary Distribution
-------------------

Why a binary distribution?

1. There are only minor changes made in the source files of octave. The main
   job was patching stdcpp, info, kpathsea and readline.

2. octave is big (40 MB with the source, object files and libraries) and it
   takes time to compile the program. (ca. 50 minutes on my
   133 MHz Pentium-Overdrive system = ca. 8 hours on a 486DX-33).



Files
-----

The files BUGS, CHANGELO, CHANGELO.1, COPYING, NEWS, NEWS.1, PROJECTS, README,
ROADMAP, SENDING.PAT and THANKS are part of the octave 2.0.10 source code.

In the zip file scripts.zip are the scripts coming with octave 2.0.10.
The installation script will unzip the correct set of script files for
your file system.

The files COPYING.EMX, emx.dll, emxlibcs.dll and termcap.dat are part of the
emx 0.9c package  (with EMXFIX04 applied, see COPYING.EMX).

octave.exe and octave.ico are the executable and the icon of the main program.
The file octave.exe must no longer be build by the install program!

info.exe is the standalone info browser coming with EMX. It was recompiled
so that info.exe and octave.exe uses the same DLL (gnuinfo.dll). And it is
patched so that info.exe accepts the '--index-search' option.

gnuview.exe is a replacement for info.exe: It accepts the same command
line option, but it starts OS/2s view.exe.

mkfifo.exe is the utility for creating, removing and listing named pipes. It
starts the program nmpserv.exe, if neccessary.

The program oct-view.exe is used for starting the image viewer.

README.OS2 is the file you are reading.

In the directory 'lisp' you find the elisp files (and the compiled elisp files)
you need to run Octave in an Emacs subshell and the files for editing script
files or temporary files of octave using the Emacs editor.

In the directory 'doc' you can find the documentation in dvi, postscript,
and also the info files and the INF files.

In the directory 'dll' you can find the Dynamic Link Libraries of octave and
emx, and the file termcap.dat is in the directory etc.

All files you need for using the dynamic loading in Octave for loading your
own C++ routines into Octave are in 'dlfcn' and its subdirectories.



Other Files of Interest
-----------------------


octa20Ab.zip or octave-2.0.10-b??.zip:
               The binary distribution of Octave-2.0.10.
octa20Ap.zip or octave-2.0.10-p??.zip:
               This archive contains always the update to the newest build.
octa20As.zip or octave-2.0.10-s??.zip:
               The patched source code for octave (including info, kpathsea,
               iostream, readline and pnm).

You need also the following packages. They are available on ftp.cdrom.com,
hobbes.nmsu.edu and wotan.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de. less and gnufutil
should be also on ftp.uni-stuttgart.de and ftp.leo.org, and the gnuplot
beta on cmpc1.phys.soton.ac.uk.

less252-2.zip: The less pager ported by Kai Uwe Rommel.
               (I know there is a newer version, but i forgot the number :-))
gp315os2b.zip: GNUPLOT 3.6 (beta 315)
gnufutil.zip : The GNU file utilities.
pmvu93.zip   : PM View 0.93.


Updating to the most recent build level
---------------------------------------

  **************************************************************************
  **  BEFORE APPLYING A PATCH MAKE SURE THAT THE PATCH IS FOR YOUR        **
  **  INSTALLED OCTAVE VERSION (CHECK THE TIMESTAMPS OF THE FILES).       **
  **************************************************************************
  **  DO NOT INSTALL AN OLDER PATCH OVER A NEWER VERSION OF OCTAVE!       **
  **************************************************************************

1. First you must install Octave. See Installation below.
2. Unzip the patches into the directory you have Octave/2 installed in.
3. Change into that directory and type 'updt-octave'
4. Type 'inst-octave /clean'


Installation
------------

Change to the directory of octave and run install (REXX must be installed!):

1.  Type 'inst-octave /install':
    The script make changes in the config.sys, .octaverc, .emacs and dir.
    It unzips the scriptfiles, removes older emx-dlls, copies the info-files
    to the INFO directory and creates an object on the desktop!
    For all modified or deleted files it will create backups in the current
    directory.

  **************************************************************************
  **  BEFORE REBOOTING CONFIRM THE CHANGES THIS SCRIPT WILL HAVE DONE     **
  **  IN YOUR CONFIG.SYS!                                                 **
  **************************************************************************
  **  IF THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG PLEASE SEND ME A NOTE!                  **
  **************************************************************************

2.  If necessary the script will ask you to reboot. Do so.

3.  To save disk space you can use 'inst-octave /clean'. All the files you
    don't need for running octave are deleted. All backup files are also
    removed.

The setup script modify the following parts of the config.sys, if necessary:

  PATH=...;h:\apps\science\octave;
  LIBPATH=...;h:\apps\science\octave\dll;
The directory you have Octave installed in:
  SET OCTAVE_HOME=c:/octave
Terminal type and a pointer to the TERMCAP.DAT file:
  SET TERM=ansi
  SET TERMCAP=h:/apps/science/octave/etc/termcap.dat
Your home directory (place of your initialization files)
  SET HOME=h:/.
The name of the initialization file:
  SET OCTAVE_INITFILE=octave.ini
The directory for your info files:
  SET INFOPATH=.;h:/apps/science/octave/doc
The directory of Gnuplot:
  SET GNUPLOT=h:/apps/science/gnuplot


Running Octave
--------------

When you start octave (without -f, --norc or --ignore-init-file), octave will
execute the following files:

1. scripts\startup\octaverc:
  Octave will use the editor 'emacsclient' and the pager 'less'. The info
  files are located using the environment variable INFOPATH and the
  gnuplot_binary using the environment variable GNUPLOT.

2. The file, which name is given by the environment variable OCTAVE_INITFILE,
  or .octaverc, if there is no OCTAVE_INITFILE. Both are searched in your
  HOME directory.

You can use octave as an external processor in an batch file, if the first
line in the batch file is
  extproc octave -q
or
  EXTPROC octave -q.
This is the same as using octave -q file.cmd.



GNUPLOT
-------

Octave uses GNUPLOT to display plots. I have tested octave with GNUPLOT 3.6
(beta 315). The system-wide startup file octaverc in the directory
scripts/startup reads the environment variable GNUPLOT and appends
"/gnuplot.exe". This should be the path and name of GNUPLOT. So if the
executable (gnuplot.exe) is in the directory h:\apps\science\gnuplot
add the following line to your config.sys:

  SET GNUPLOT=h:/apps/science/gnuplot

You must use the beta of GNUPLOT because it supports multiple plots.



PAGER
-----

If you want to use the less pager, you need the file less252-2.zip or newer.
This less port does not use the termcap library, so it is unable to work with
ansi-color-2, ansi-color-3,...

If you want to use ansi-color-3, you must recompile less after deleting
termcap.c and adding the termcap-library in the makefile, or you must edit
the file termcap.dat: Replace every tc=ansi in the termcap.dat by the lines
following ansi.



EMACS
-----

You can use emacs to edit the script files of octave. To do so add the lines 

  (setq load-path (append '("h:/apps/science/octave/lisp") load-path))
  (autoload 'octave-mode "octave-mode" "Enter Octave mode." t)
  (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.[Mm]$" . octave-mode) auto-mode-alist))
  (defun my-octave-mode-hook ()
    (setq fill-column 76)
    (auto-fill-mode 1))
  (setq octave-mode-hook 'my-octave-mode-hook)
  (setq octave-prog-filename "h:/apps/science/octave/octave.exe")

to your .emacs.


If you run emacs in server mode, octave can use the emacsclient for editing
temporary files. Add the following lines to .emacs:

  (autoload 'octave-tmp-mode "octave-tmp-mode" "Enter Octave's tmp mode." t)
  (setq auto-mode-alist
    (cons '("[Oo][Cc][Tt]-....\\.[Tt][Mm][Pp]$" . tmp-mode)
	 auto-mode-alist))

The tmp mode is the normal text mode with one exception: If you finished
editing by pressing C-x # the buffer is killed. So octave can delete the file.


If you want to run Octave in a special shell mode under Emacs you must also
add the following line to .emacs:

  (require 'octave)

There is also another octave shell mode, which is normally part of
Octave. The file is called octave.el. I do not use it, because it created
a lot of problems on my system AND it won't work correctly.

For example your .emacs file should look like this:

  (setq load-path (append '("h:/apps/science/octave/lisp") load-path))
  (require 'octave)
  (autoload 'octave-mode "octave-mode" "Enter Octave mode." t)
  (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.[Mm]$" . octave-mode) auto-mode-alist))
  (defun my-octave-mode-hook ()
    (setq fill-column 76)
    (auto-fill-mode 1))
  (setq octave-mode-hook 'my-octave-mode-hook)
  (setq octave-prog-filename "h:/apps/science/octave/octave.exe")
  (autoload 'octave-tmp-mode "octave-tmp-mode" "Enter Octave's tmp mode." t)
  (setq auto-mode-alist
        (cons '("[Oo][Cc][Tt]-....\\.[Tt][Mm][Pp]$" . octave-tmp-mode)
              auto-mode-alist))



Dynamic Loading of C++ Functions
--------------------------------

This port now supports the dynamic loading. Use the script MAKE-OCTFILE to
compile your scripts EVERY time you installed a new version of Octave! The
script MAKE-OCTFILE is created by INST-OCTAVE.

For example:

  cd dlfcn\examples
  make-octfile hello.cc

and add the path '.../dlfcn/examples' to Octave's LOADPATH; start Octave and
type 'hello (1,2,3)'.

You can find examples in the directories '.../dlfcn/examples' and
'scripts/image/codecs'.



Images
------

Octave for OS/2 uses the excellent PM View. If you want to use a different
viewer or if your PM View is installed in directory other then
h:\apps\graphics\pmview, set the environment variable OCTAVE_IMAGE_VIEWER.
You can use the environment variable OCTAVE_IMAGE_VIEWER_OPT for specifying
command line options: For example:

SET OCTAVE_IMAGE_VIEWER=c:\pmview\pmview.exe
SET OCTAVE_IMAGE_VIEWER_OPT=/WPos(,,,,ForAct)

For loading and saving images Octave uses now the DLFCN feature. Octave can
read and write BMP, PNM, IMG formats and write Postscript.



MKFIFO
------

The mkfifo command is now supported! You can use Octave's mkfifo command
to create a named pipe for communication with another program (local or
in a LAN). There is also a utility called mkfifo, which can be used for
creating, removing, listing named pipes, you have created with mkfifo.
The names of the pipes must start with '\PIPE' or with '/PIPE'. If you want
access to a pipe on another computer in your LAN you must prepend
'\\HOSTNAME', where HOSTNAME stands for the name of the computer.

For example:
1) Start octave.
2) Open an OS/2 window.
3) Run mkfifo \PIPE\TEST
4) Type 'echo abcdef >\PIPE\TEST' in the OS/2 window
5) In Octave execute the following commands:
   fid = fopen ("/PIPE/TEST", "r");
   fgets (fid)
   fclose (fid);
6) Run mkfifo -d \PIPE\TEST in the OS/2 window

To speed up the execution of the first mkfifo command you can add the
following in your STARTUP.CMD:

detach [DRIVE:]\[PATH]\nmpserv --noexit




Known Limitations, Modifications and Bugs
-----------------------------------------

1) fork is not supported, use spawn instead. Compare the script file popen2.m
   with the original version (popen2.org).

2) dup2 has been renamed to _dup2



Comments, Bugs, Problems, Ideas, ...
------------------------------------

If you have any problem installing or using this port, let me know!

If have any idea to make octave for OS/2 a better program, send me a mail.
Also any comments are welcome.

And thanks for all your nice mails i received, and thanks to all of you
helping me to remove the bugs.

My email addresses are:

INTERNET:    gebhardt@crunch.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de
CompuServe:  100114,1371

**************************************************************************
**        NO MAIL FROM INTERNET TO MY COMPUSERVE ADDRESS!               **
**************************************************************************

Klaus Gebhardt [TEAM OS/2]
Institut fuer Kernphysik
Technische Hochschule Darmstadt
