Changes

'''Introduction to the Bundle'''

'''Introduction to the Bundle'''

Installing Octave on a mac should be a breeze since is there a nice bundle that's easily downloaded and contains everything that you will need .  But there's a lot of new users that run into problems, and for good reason. If you are a mac user and are suddenly faced with installing stuff that requires you to delve into the bowels of your computer for the first time (or even the second or third) - it can be mighty intimidating and success can be illusive.  This writer knows first hand.  So this is largely for those at the low end of the experience spectrum, although there may be some tips that help the power user community if they have need to make Octave work in the mac world.  I hope so, because the things they contribute certainly help me out a lot.

Installing Octave on a mac should be a breeze since is there a nice bundle that's easily downloaded and contains everything that you will need .  But there's a lot of new users that run into problems, and for good reason. If you are a mac user and are suddenly faced with installing stuff that requires you to delve into the bowels of your computer for the first time (or even the second or third) - it can be mighty intimidating and success can be illusive.  This writer knows first hand.  So this is largely for those at the low end of the experience spectrum, although there may be some tips that help the power user community if they have need to make Octave work in the mac world.  I hope so, because the things they contribute certainly help me out a lot.

 

Octave is a numerical computation software platform.  It can calculate just about anything that you can imagine.  But if you want to see the results graphically, you need a plotting system to make that happen.  That's another application called Gnuplot.  Gnuplot takes output from Octave and plots it in windows on your screen - or sends it off to print or whatever you want to do.  This requires a windowing system - (now we're getting a bit closer to the bowels) - and the most common one is X11.  This is installed by default on OS X 10.5 and above.  However many mac users prefer the appearance of another windowing system - Aquaterm.  So this part of the wiki helps you to install Octave and make it plot your results through Gnuplot using the Aquaterm windowing system.  At the end I'll try and deal with some of the issues that arise during installation that might make it seem like 'it just doesn't work'.

As you probably know, Octave is a numerical computation software platform.  It can calculate just about anything that you can imagine.  But if you want to see the results graphically, you need a plotting system to make that happen.  That's another application called Gnuplot.  Gnuplot takes output from Octave and plots it in windows on your screen - or sends it off to print or whatever you want to do.  This requires a windowing system - (now we're getting a bit closer to the bowels) - and the most common one is X11.  This is installed by default on OS X 10.5 and above.  However many mac users prefer the appearance of another windowing system - Aquaterm.  So this part of the wiki helps you to install Octave and make it plot your results through Gnuplot using the Aquaterm windowing system.  At the end I'll try and deal with some of the issues that arise during installation that might make it seem like 'it just doesn't work'.

   

   

'''Let's do it'''

'''Let's do it'''