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A few (Octave) ideas


From: Jake
Subject: A few (Octave) ideas
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 14:33:15 -0400

Hello all,
 
I just finished a numerical methods class at OSU and noticed that Octave has implementations of all of the MATLAB functions shown in the textbook (Numerical Methods, 2nd edition by Amos Gilat) except for MATLAB's ODE solvers: ode23, ode45, ode113, ode15s, ode23s, ode23t, and ode23tb.  It also lacks the odeset function that these solvers rely on.  See http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/ref/ode23.html.
 
Before you get any ideas, I am only interested in helping and endorsing Octave, NOT screaming "Why doesn't Octave have MATLAB's ____???"
 
I'm aware of the OdePkg package on Octave-Forge, but this only implements three of the previously mentioned functions, ode23, ode45, and odeset.  I'm also aware of Octave's built-in function, lsode.  These are all great functions, but I'm very interested in endorsing Octave over MATLAB in academia and as such, it's important that Octave has implementations of most of MATLAB's core functions.
 
Most of my programming experience is with C, but I'm fluent enough in MATLAB/Octave that I'd like to take a shot at implementing these functions.  I'd hope that they'd be improved by the community and be included in Octave someday.
 
Naturally, I've got a couple of questions:
 
1. Is there a reason why these functions haven't already been implemented?  Lack of information on the algorithms, perhaps?
2. Is the maintainer of OdePkg (Thomas Treichl) already working on implementing these functions?  I'd like to help, if possible.
3. Are there any reasons why I shouldn't try to implement these functions?
 
I've also got another idea concerning packages.  I was reading through the Octave manual the other day and saw the various difference pkg functions and urlwrite.  Anyway, to cut to the chase, I think it'd be very useful and very easy to implement an extra pkg option to automatically download and install Octave-Forge packages.  We could keep a small text file on one of the Octave sites containing package names along with their dependencies and download URLs.  The new function would download this file, parse it, and then do nothing more than download packages with urlwrite and install them with pkg install (as well as ensuring that dependent packages are installed first).  It'd be awesome if you could take a fresh install of Octave and simply type in something like 'pkg get vrml'.  I'd LOVE to program this much at least and would like to hear what all of your thoughts are on such an idea.
 
Thanks for your time.
 
-Jacob Abel
http://thatcadguy.blogspot.com/

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