On 25-Feb-00 steveaux@my-Deja.com wrote:
Thanks, Bernie. I vaguely recall having heard of Octave, but not that much. I'll take a look at that. Octave might do the trick for me as long as it is capable of at least simple plotting. My use for Matlab/Octave involves a bit of number-crunching, but with frequent stops for user checking and input, hence the need to do some simple plotting. So my questions for any Octave users are:
I think octave should be able to do what you want. There are a few differences with MatLab, but it is very closely compatible. Some of the differences are to octave's advantage; others to MatLab's (especially on the graphics front).
1. Can Octave do simple plotting? (Sorry if this sounds vague. Basically, if Octave doesn't support all Matlab plot types, can I still get an x/y plot out of it without severe contraints as to the number of elements in the x- and y- vectors? For example, could I plot x vs y if each ector has 2000 elements?)
Octave's plotting is based on gnuplot. Octave has commands to do the equivalent of all the MatLab basic plots: X-Y plots: plot(y); plot(x,y); plot(x,y,"-b") [use blue lines]; plot(x,y,"-b",x,z,"og") [blue lines for y, green circles for z) "mesh" plots: mesh(Z); histograms: hist(X,u); etc also surface plots and contour plots. You might miss the "interactive" plots, selecting points with the mouse, rotating plots, etc. (These limitations relate to gnuplot; there is some work in progress at present to liberate octave from the gnuplot yoke; some people have already implemented interfaces with other plotting packages such as PlotMTV, PLPlot, geomview). Control over the plot appearance etc. is done by passing gnuplot option-commands using the "gset" command (e.g. gset nokey, gset xrange [0:10], gset size square, etc.).
2. Can Octave save data into mat-files (or at least ASCII type files that Matlab can read)?
Octave can save and load MatLab 4 ".mat" files (not MatLab 5): save -mat-binary X Y ... as well as in its native format. If you want to transfer files from MatLab, make sure they are saved in MatLab 4 format.
3. Is there a homepage or online manual I can peruse? If so, where?
The octave package comes with a comprehensive PostScript manual. Sources and precompiled binaries can be found under http://www.che.wisc.edu/octave/octave.html I have been using octave for several years, also in collaboration with people using MatLab. Some care has to be taken over compatibility, but you can do very sophisticated MatLab-style number-crunching with it. If your needs are fairly basic, you should get on fine with octave. Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Date: 26-Feb-00 Time: 02:19:31 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/