Re: Bug#471273: Section 14.1.4: Rational Approximations

[Thomas Weber]

On 13/04/08 12:05 -0400, Ben Abbott wrote:
>> ----- Forwarded message from Drew Parsons <address@hidden> -----
>>
>> From: Drew Parsons <address@hidden>
>> Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:41:05 +1100
>> To: address@hidden
>> Cc: address@hidden
>> Subject: [Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#471273: Section 14.1.4: Rational
>>      Approximations
>> Organization: The Debian Project
>> X-Mailer: Evolution 2.12.3
>> Reply-To: address@hidden, address@hidden
>>
>> Hello Octave Maintainers,
>>
>> I've noticed that in the octave documentation section 14.1.4  
>> documented
>> a pair of functions used to generate rational approximations.
>>
>> Section 14 concerns Input and Output and Sect 14.1 is for Basic Input
>> and Output, so it looked to me that Sect 14.1.4 had got misplaced
>> somehow.
>>
>> After raising the matter with the Debian octave maintainers, we  
>> figured
>> the Rational Approximations were probably in that Section because they
>> can be used as an option to the format() function, Sec 14.1.1.
>>
>> I'm bringing the question to you then, to confirm if you really do  
>> want
>> to confine these functions to output only, or whether they have any
>> other broader uses that might warrant placing them in some other  
>> section
>> (e.g. Number Theory) ?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Drew Parsons
>
> I can't find anything that resembles what is described in the current  
> manual.
>
>       http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/

That version is outdated, especially 
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/index.html#Top
refers to 2.9.12+.


> Specifically what is the pair of functions? ... are they among expm,  
> logm, sqrtm, kron, and syl?
>
> If so, it appears the problem has been resolved.
>
>       
> http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Functions-of-a-Matrix.html
>
> If not, please let the list know what the names of the pair of functions 
> would be.

The issue is that section 14, "Input and Output" has a sub-chapter
"14.1.4 Rational Approximations" which doesn't look like it fits there. 

I've copied a pdf version from 3.0.0 to 
http://tw-math.de/~weber/octave-a4.pdf
The relevant page it 158.

The relevant source file is doc/interpreter/io.txt.

        Thomas