2.9.14 on Mac OSX: some confusion and questions

[DushanM]

I just downloaded and installed the binary version of 2.9.14 for Mac OS
X, and am trying it out and beginning to learn how to run it (am fairly
new to both Mac OS X and Octave).  Reading the PDF manual led me to
expect one response from the 'lookfor' command, but that's certainly not
what I got:

octave-2.9.14:21> lookfor
usage: lookfor
octave-2.9.14:21>

This seems pretty useless.  If instead I get more specific, with

octave-2.9.14:21> lookfor sum

a blank line appears and nothing at all happens until I hit Ctrl-C, when
the follwing appears:

----------------- begin clip ---------------
^C
WIFCONTINUED         Given STATUS from a call to `waitpid', return true
if the
                     child process was resumed by delivery of `SIGCONT'.
builtin:cumsum       Cumulative sum of elements along dimension DIM.
builtin:sum          Sum of elements along dimension DIM.
builtin:sumsq        Sum of squares of elements along dimension DIM.
md5sum               Calculates the MD5 sum of the file FILE.
spcumsum             Cumulative sum of elements along dimension DIM.
spsum                Sum of elements along dimension DIM.
spsumsq              Sum of squares of elements along dimension DIM.
is_dgkf              Determine whether a continuous time state space
system
                     meets assumptions of DGKF algorithm.
fvl                  Return the future value at the end of N periods of
an
                     initial lump sum investment L, given a per-period
interest
                     rate R.
pv                   Returns the present value of an investment that
will pay
                     off P for N consecutive periods, assuming an
interest R.
pvl                  Return the present value of an investment that will
pay off
                     P in one lump sum at the end of N periods, given
the
                     interest rate R.
isequalwithequalnans Assuming NaN == NaN, return true if all of X1, X2,
.
summer               Create color colormap.
trace                Compute the trace of A, `sum (diag (A))'.
kurtosis             If X is a vector of length N, return the kurtosis
kurtosis
                     (x) = N^(-1) std(x)^(-4) sum ((x - mean(x)).
skewness             If X is a vector of length n, return the skewness
skewness
                     (x) = N^(-1) std(x)^(-3) sum ((x - mean(x)).
warning: help: Texinfo formatting filter exited abnormally
warning: help: raw Texinfo source of help text follows...
warning: help:

-*- texinfo -*-
@deftypefn {Function File} {} nbinpdf (@var{x}, @var{n}, @var{p})
For each element of @var{x}, compute the probability density function
(PDF) at @var{x} of the Pascal (negative binomial) distribution with
parameters @var{n} and @var{p}.

The number of failures in a Bernoulli experiment with success
probability @var{p} before the @var{n}-th success follows this
distribution. 
@end deftypefn



----------------- end clip ---------------

Is the 'lookfor' command somehow broken in 2.9.14, or am I missing
something more-or-less obvious?

Also, is there a Preferences file I can access to modify the Octave
prompt (add a newline before it and give it a different color) and
change the window's background color?  Or is this only possible by
re-compiling?

- Dushan Mitrovich