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 source and binaries are available by anonymous ftp from ftp://www.che.wisc.edu/pub/octave.
Source and binaries for a port of Octave to OS/2 are available from ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/math.
To get started, there is a brief introduction, and also the preface to the manual. For more detailed information, you can browse the complete documentation, which has been converted to HTML directly from the installed info files with info2www.
If you still have questions, there is always the FAQ (with answers).
There are two active mailing lists devoted to Octave. The help-octave mailing list is available for questions related to using, installing, and porting Octave that are not adequately answered by the Octave manual or by the FAQ. The bug-octave list is used for reporting bugs. An archive of postings to both lists are available here.
An archive of contributed functions for Octave is available from http://www.tsc.uvigo.es/GTS/Octave/oct_arch.html.
John W. Eaton
jwe@bevo.che.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin
Department of Chemical Engineering
Madison WI 53719