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<title> Preface to the Octave Manual </title>
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<h2>Preface</h2>
<p>
Octave was originally intended to be companion software for an
undergraduate-level textbook on chemical reactor design being written by
James B. Rawlings of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and John
G. Ekerdt of the University of Texas.
</p>

<p>
Clearly, Octave is now much more than just another `courseware' package
with limited utility beyond the classroom.  Although our initial goals
were somewhat vague, we knew that we wanted to create something that
would enable students to solve realistic problems, and that they could
use for many things other than chemical reactor design problems.
</p>

<p>
There are those who would say that we should be teaching the students
Fortran instead, because that is the computer language of engineering,
but every time we have tried that, the students have spent far too much
time trying to figure out why their Fortran code crashes and not enough
time learning about chemical engineering.  With Octave, most students
pick up the basics quickly, and are using it confidently in just a few
hours.
</p>

<p>
Although it was originally intended to be used to teach reactor design,
it has been used in several other undergraduate and graduate
courses in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of
Texas, and the math department at the University of Texas has been using
it for teaching differential equations and linear algebra as well.  If
you find it useful, please let us know.  We are always interested to
find out how Octave is being used in other places.
</p>

<p>
Virtually everyone thinks that the name Octave has something to do with
music, but it is actually the name of a former
<a href="http://www.engr.orst.edu/~reed/CSTR/profs.html">professor</a>
of mine who wrote a famous textbook on chemical reaction engineering,
and who was also well known for his ability to do quick `back of the
envelope' calculations.  We hope that this software will make it
possible for many people to do more ambitious computations just as
easily.
</p>

<p>
Everyone is encouraged to share this software with others under the
terms of the
<a href="cgi-bin/info2www?(octave)Copying">GNU General Public License</a>
as described at the beginning of this manual.  You are also encouraged
to help make Octave more useful by writing and contributing additional
functions for it, and by reporting any problems you may have.
</p>

<p>
Many people have already contributed to Octave's development.  In
addition to John W. Eaton, the following people have helped write parts
of Octave or helped out in various other ways.
</p>

<ul>
<li><em>Karl Berry</em> (karl@cs.umb.edu) wrote the <tt>kpathsea</tt> library
that allows Octave to recursively search directory paths for function
and script files.</li>

<li><em>Georg Beyerle</em> (gbeyerle@awi-potsdam.de) contributed code to
save values in Matlab's <tt>.mat</tt>-file format, and has provided
many useful bug reports and suggestions.</li>

<li><em>John Campbell</em> (jcc@bevo.che.wisc.edu) wrote most of the file
and C-style input and output functions.</li>

<li><em>Brian Fox</em> (bfox@gnu.ai.mit.edu) wrote the <tt>readline</tt>
library used for command history editing, and the portion of this
manual that documents it.</li>

<li><em>A. Scottedward Hodel</em> (scotte@eng.auburn.edu) contributed a
number of functions including <tt>expm</tt>, <tt>qzval</tt>,
<tt>qzhess</tt>, <tt>syl</tt>, <tt>lyap</tt>, and <tt>balance</tt>.</li>

<li><em>Kurt Hornik</em> (Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at) provided the
<tt>corrcoef</tt>, <tt>cov</tt>, <tt>kurtosis</tt>, <tt>pinv</tt>, and
<tt>skewness</tt> functions.</li>

<li><em>Phil Johnson</em> (johnsonp@nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu) has helped to
make Linux releases available.</li>

<li><em>Friedrich Leisch</em> (leisch@ci.tuwien.ac.at) provided the
<tt>mahalanobis</tt> function.</li>

<li><em>Ken Neighbors</em> (wkn@leland.stanford.edu) has provided many
useful bug reports and comments on Matlab compatibility.</li>

<li><em>Rick Niles</em> (niles@axp745.gsfc.nasa.gov) rewrote Octave's
plotting functions to add line styles and the ability to specify an
unlimited number of lines in a single call.  He also continues to
track down odd incompatibilities and bugs.</li>

<li><em>Mark Odegard</em> (meo@sugarland.unocal.com) provided the initial
implementation of <tt>fread</tt>, <tt>fwrite</tt>, <tt>feof</tt>, and
<tt>ferror</tt>.</li>

<li><em>Tony Richardson</em> (tony@guts.biomed.uakron.edu) wrote Octave's
image processing functions as well as most of the original polynomial
functions.</li>

<li><em>R. Bruce Tenison</em> (Bruce.Tenison@eng.auburn.edu) wrote the
<tt>hess</tt> and <tt>schur</tt> functions.</li>

<li><em>Teresa Twaroch</em> (twaroch@ci.tuwien.ac.at) provided the functions
<tt>gls</tt> and <tt>ols</tt>.</li>

<li><em>Fook Fah Yap</em> (ffy@eng.cam.ac.uk) provided the <tt>fft</tt> and
<tt>ifft</tt> functions and valuable bug reports for early versions.
</ul>

<p>
Special thanks to the following people and organizations for
supporting the development of Octave:
</p>

<ul>
<li><em>Digital Equipment Corporation</em>, for an equipment grant as part
of their External Research Program.</li>

<li><em>Sun Microsystems</em>, Inc., for an Academic Equipment grant.</li>

<li><em>International Business Machines, Inc.</em>, for providing equipment
as part of a grant to the University of Texas College of Engineering.</li>

<li><em>Texaco Chemical Company</em>, for providing funding to continue the
development of this software.</li>

<li><em>The University of Texas College of Engineering</em>, for providing a
Challenge for Excellence Research Supplement, and for providing an
Academic Development Funds grant.</li>

<li><em>The State of Texas</em>, for providing funding through the Texas
Advanced Technology Program under Grant No. 003658-078.</li>

<li><em>Noel Bell</em>, Senior Engineer, Texaco Chemical Company, Austin
Texas.</li>

<li><em>James B. Rawlings</em>, Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Department of Chemical Engineering.</li>

<li><em>Richard Stallman</em>, for writing GNU.</li>
</ul>

<p>
This project would not have been possible without the GNU software used
in and used to produce Octave.
</p>
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author	jwe
date	Sun, 13 Oct 1996 16:22:35 +0000
parents	8d7454ead97e
children	26e9ee533d87