Re: Windows Vista and Octave

[Olli Saarela]

John G. wrote:
> I'm interested in Octave but have not been able to find out if it is 
> compatible with Vista.  I noted that the website mentioned compatibility 
> with 2000 and XP.

I have successfully used Octave on Vista, and I don't see any reason why 
Vista should be omitted from a compatibility list any more.

Go ahead with Octave on Vista (unless you have already done so). Should 
you encounter any problems, please report them and help to debug them. 
With earlier Octave versions I have encountered some minor 
Windows-specific / Vista-specific problems, but they have been resolved 
very rapidly after they have been brought to the attention of the Octave 
community.

> Also, any advice would be appreciated.  I have no 
> experience with Linux.

Experience with Linux isn't at all necessary. If you are familiar with
neither Octave nor Matlab, it would be worthwhile to search the web for
a tutorial.

Here are a couple of Windows-specific tips:

A known, but only a minor imperfection is that closing an Octave session
from the "X" in the upper right corner pops up an error message. This
can be ignored. The "quit" command doesn't show such a message.

In Octave you can use either single (') or double quotes (") for
strings. Single quotes are more convenient for path names, because
of the special meaning of backslash inside double quotes. E.g.,

    '\t'  % a string with 2 characters: backslash t
    "\t"  % a string with 1 character: tabulator
    cd 'd:\tmp\new folder' % quotes needed because of the white
                           % space in directory name
    addpath('c:\some directory\m-files')

Persistent definitions (such as the path where m-files are searched) can
be set up in a file named ".octaverc" in the user's home directory. This
file is executed each time Octave is started. Not all text editors in 
Windows are able to create a file with only an ".extension" but no 
actual "name". A workaround is to issue the following commands in Octave:

    cd                                   % cd to home directory
    f=fopen('.octaverc','a');fclose(f);  % create file
    edit .octaverc                       % open editor

Welcome to Octave,
   Olli