From octave-sources-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Fri Nov 22 12:24:43 2002
Subject: Re: a couple of simple functions for Matlab compatibility
From: schraudo at inf dot ethz dot ch
To: Paul Kienzle <pkienzle at jazz dot ncnr dot nist dot gov>
cc: Rafael Laboissiere <laboissiere at psy dot mpg dot de>,    <octave-sources@bevo.che.wisc.edu>
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 12:19:48 -0600

> Nicol, Lambert W is available from the matlab symbolic toolbox under the
> name lambertw.  
> 
> http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/toolbox/symbolic/lambertw.shtml

Oh, of course - since the matlab symbolic toolbox is actually just an
interface to the maple compute engine, it's there under its maple name.

> My attitude is that if a function exists somewhere in Matlab then we should
> try to support the matlab interface.  Do you mind renaming it to lambertw?

No problem.

> Everything in octave-forge must be available under an open source license
> 
> 	http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
> 
> or placed in the public domain.  GPL or BSD are preferred but there are others

lambertw and betaln already carry a copyright notice with GPL license, the
others (besselh1, besselh2, ans, lbeta, ndims) don't because they are such
trivial one-liners - ans is actually a zero-liner, its only purpose is to
respond to help(ans)! - that I am placing them in the public domain. Should
I add a notice to that effect to them?  It hardly seem worth it.

> Rafael, assuming Nicol doesn't object, would you care to add the missing
> functions to the appropriate places in octave-forge?

No objections at all, thanks for the rapid response!  You guys are really
on the ball.  Best wishes,

- Nici.

-- 
    Dr. Nicol N. Schraudolph               http://www.inf.ethz.ch/~schraudo/
    Institute of Computational Science             mobile:  +41-76-585-3877
    ETH Zentrum, HRS H5  (Hirschengraben 84)       office:      -1-632-7942
    CH-8092 Zuerich, Switzerland                      fax:            -1374