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

Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2007 John W. Eaton

Overview
--------

GNU 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.

GNU 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 3 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.

GNU 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.

Availability
------------

The latest released version of Octave is always available via
anonymous ftp from ftp.octave.org in the directory /pub/octave.
Complete source and binaries for several popular systems are
available.  Source distributions of Octave are also available from
ftp.gnu.org in the directory /pub/gnu, as well as many mirror
sites around the world.

Installation and Bugs
---------------------

Octave requires approximately 925MB of disk storage to unpack and
compile from source (significantly less if you don't compile with
debugging symbols).  Once installed, Octave requires approximately
350MB of disk space (again, considerably less if you don't build
shared libraries or the binaries and libraries do not include
debugging symbols).

To compile Octave, you will need a recent version of GNU Make.  You
will also need a recent version of g++ or other ANSI C++ compiler.
You will also need a Fortran 77 compiler or f2c.  If you use f2c, you
will need a script like fort77 that works like a normal Fortran
compiler by combining f2c with your C compiler in a single script.

YOU MUST HAVE GNU MAKE TO COMPILE OCTAVE.  Octave's Makefiles use
features of GNU Make that are not present in other versions of make.
GNU Make is very portable and easy to install.

See the notes in the files INSTALL and INSTALL.OCTAVE for more
specific installation instructions, including directions for
installing Octave from a binary distribution.

The file BUGS contains a recommended procedure for reporting bugs, as
well as a list of known problems and possible fixes.

Documentation
-------------

Octave's manual has been revised for version 3.0, but it is lagging a
bit behind the development of the software.  In particular, there is
currently no complete documentation of the C++ class libraries.  If
you notice ommissions or inconsistencies, please report them as bugs
to bug@octave.org.  Specific suggestions for ways to improve Octave
and its documentation are always welcome.  Reports with patches are
even more welcome.

Additional Information
----------------------

Up to date information about Octave is available on the WWW at the
URL http://www.octave.org, including archives of the help, bug, and
maintainers mailing lists.


John W. Eaton
jwe@bevo.che.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering

Last updated: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:26:42 EDT
