Editing Talk:Octave for Microsoft Windows

This page is a mess. It really needs some cleanup. [[User:JordiGH|JordiGH]] 22:23, 18 December 2011 (PST)

How about just a couple links right at the top pointing to the Octave Forge and Cygwin pages. Silly that people have to sift through all this just to get to the download links, and easy to miss for newbies.

Not being a computer nerd, the installation instructions are not clear for me. Examples:
 
Quote: "1.Create an installation directory of which doesn't have space chars (i.e. C:\Octave\Octave3.6.4_gcc4.6.2\). This directory is referred hereafter as <your_install_dir>." 

Okay so far, except for the dangling "of".

Quote:"2.Extract the complete directories tree from Octave3.6.4_gcc4.6.2_20130329.7z to the installation directory keeping the original directory structure as in the archive (you can use 7-zip tool from http://www.7-zip.org/). Note that the archive contains Octave3.6.4_gcc4.6.2 folder, so you want to extract to the *parent* of <your_install_dir>." 

Here the trouble starts. Isn't downloading the zip-file and extracting the zip-file two steps? 
I take it I download to the installation directory. Now the instructions are contradictory: Do I extract the files within the installation directory, or in the parent directory ??? 

You would do a favour (and save a lot of time) to people like me if you check your instructions step by step. Writing comprehensive instructions is not easy, and really needs some fiddling and correcting.