Which version?

I wrote all my demos with octave2.0, and I believe they should all work with any version of 2.0.

As of Mon 14/6/04, many people have started using octave2.1. Unfortunately, 2.1 is not reverse-compatible with 2.0 and it is impossible to modify my code so that it all works under both. Most of my demonstrations will work under 2.1 if the file mymenu.m is replaced by mymenu.m. (In case this link does not work, the required diffs are

diff mymenu.m  ../mcmc/mymenu.m
26c26
< function num = mymenu (t, varargin)
---
> function num = mymenu (t, ...)
53c53
< #      va_start ();
---
>       va_start ();
56c56
<       disp (varargin{i});
---
>       disp (va_arg ());

.) With this fix, I believe kmeans and kmeansoft will work. Some parts of mcmc will work, but not all (multiplot has been broken in 2.1). In sum, I recommend installing octave2.0.

Octave and gnuplot

Further version-number problems may arise in some demonstrations (especially where contour plots are involved). If you are using a recent version of gnuplot (eg 3.8+) then because of a change in how gnuplot handles simultaneous plotting of data points and contour plots, you may find that one or the other is invisible. I have not found a fix for this annoying situation. The problem is independent of the octave version. Downgrading gnuplot to gnuplot 3.7 patchlevel 1 should fix things.

Using Octave in Cambridge

Octave has kindly been made available on thor. It is in /opt/octave/bin/octave
There is a module for octave, so if the command

module add octave
ulimit -t 60000

is used, /opt/octave/bin is added to the user's PATH, and /opt/octave/man to the MANPATH.) The ulimit command ensures that the process can run for hours if need be.
All the libraries and executables are installed in subdirectories of /opt/octave.
Installation was by

Janet Wilkins                               Email: J.M.Wilkins@ucs.cam.ac.uk
Computing Service

David MacKay <mackay@mrao.cam.ac.uk>

Last modified: Fri Apr 13 16:01:04 2007