From help-octave-request  Wed Mar 17 14:37:12 1993
Subject: Re: instructions on using octave? 
From: John Eaton <jwe>
To: corey at amiganet dot chi dot il dot us (Corey Sweeney)
Cc: help-octave
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 93 14:37:07 CST

: hello.  I got some octave binaries a few months ago.  Unfortuanately
: they came 
: with no documentation on how to use the program.  but i found a note saying
: that the sources were  on a ftp site.  so i got the source and tried to pull
: out the documentation files.  I didn't see any user help.  
: 
: Is there some kind of Octave tutorial?  Is there any octave documentation on
: how to use Octave?  If so am i overlooking it in the source files or could
: somebody send me a copy?

Unfortunately, there isn't much documentation yet.  The closest thing
is an out of date man page in the source distribution.

For Matlab basics, which might be of some help in using Octave, there
is a tutorial available from netlib, either via the mailserver at
netlib.ornl.gov, or via anonymous ftp from research.att.com in the
file /netlib/matlab/teaching/primer.tex.Z.

I would consider trying to modify this and distribute it with Octave
except that it looks almost identical to parts of the Matlab manual
that I have.  For example, the tables of functions are formatted the
same, the text is organized in the same way, etc.  Some of the text is
nearly identical as well...

: and if for some reason there is no documentation could someone tell
: me how to define a function and integrate it?

Do you mean solve a set of ODEs, or integrate a nonlinear function of
one variable?

The test directory in the source contains a simple example of
integrating three nonlinear ODEs.  Look for the file that defines the
function `oregonator'.

Here is an example of integrating a simple nonlinear function over a
finite interval:

  octave:5> function y = expneg (x) y = exp (-x); end
  octave:6> [v, ier, nfun, err] = quad ('expneg', 0, 1)
  v = 0.632121

  ier = 0

  nfun = 21

  err = 2.83319e-14

--
John W. Eaton      | 4.3BSD is not perfect.  -- Leffler, et al. (1989).
jwe at che dot utexas dot edu|  |