Hello all,
I just finished a numerical methods class at OSU and noticed that Octave has
implementations of all of the MATLAB functions shown in the textbook
(Numerical Methods, 2nd edition by Amos Gilat) except for MATLAB's ODE
solvers: ode23, ode45, ode113, ode15s, ode23s, ode23t, and ode23tb. It also
lacks the odeset function that these solvers rely on. See
<http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/ref/ode23.html>
http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/ref/ode23.html.
Before you get any ideas, I am only interested in helping and endorsing
Octave, NOT screaming "Why doesn't Octave have MATLAB's ____???"
I'm aware of the OdePkg package on Octave-Forge, but this only implements
three of the previously mentioned functions, ode23, ode45, and odeset. I'm
also aware of Octave's built-in function, lsode. These are all great
functions, but I'm very interested in endorsing Octave over MATLAB in
academia and as such, it's important that Octave has implementations of most
of MATLAB's core functions.
Most of my programming experience is with C, but I'm fluent enough in
MATLAB/Octave that I'd like to take a shot at implementing these functions.
I'd hope that they'd be improved by the community and be included in Octave
someday.
Naturally, I've got a couple of questions:
1. Is there a reason why these functions haven't already been implemented?
Lack of information on the algorithms, perhaps?
2. Is the maintainer of OdePkg (Thomas Treichl) already working on
implementing these functions? I'd like to help, if possible.
3. Are there any reasons why I shouldn't try to implement these functions?
I've also got another idea concerning packages. I was reading through the
Octave manual the other day and saw the various difference pkg functions and
urlwrite. Anyway, to cut to the chase, I think it'd be very useful and very
easy to implement an extra pkg option to automatically download and install
Octave-Forge packages. We could keep a small text file on one of the Octave
sites containing package names along with their dependencies and download
URLs. The new function would download this file, parse it, and then do
nothing more than download packages with urlwrite and install them with pkg
install (as well as ensuring that dependent packages are installed first).
It'd be awesome if you could take a fresh install of Octave and simply type
in something like 'pkg get vrml'. I'd LOVE to program this much at least
and would like to hear what all of your thoughts are on such an idea.
Thanks for your time.
-Jacob Abel
http://thatcadguy.blogspot.com/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate
GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the
lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo
_______________________________________________
Octave-dev mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/octave-dev
