Re: Octave.app 3.0.1 for Mac OS X

[JEBrown800]

Dear Mr. Edwards,

Great news about Octave for Mac OS X 10.3.9:

The oldest version available (Octave 2.9.12) is working for me, and doesn't have the aforementioned bug.
You can download this from the usual place,

     http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2888&package_id=237839

After installation, I double-clicked Octave.app. There was some sort of abort early in the session, and Octave disappeared from the Dock.
Ignore this if it happens to you, and wait a few seconds, and a Terminal.app window should open with a live Octave session. :^)

BTW if you still need a version of readlink, I've posted my cheap script version on my website at

     http://users.aol.com/JEBrown800/private/bin/readlink.html

(Someone suggested that we could get readlink from the website of some user group I've never heard of --
Bad idea. For security reasons, I recommend that you never accept code from non-trusted sources.)

PS. Don't delete the Octave 3.0 installer -- you'll need the executable gnuplot
(Octave 2.9.12 doesn't provide gnuplot, and the gnuplot people provide only source code).

I had to manually link gnuplot into my path:

     (running tcsh in an xterm window)
     % ln -s /Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/gnuplot ~/bin/gnuplot
     % setenv GNUTERM x11 # Suggested by gnuplot/Readme.html
     % octave
     # As a test, let's plot a parabola:
     octave-2.9.12:1> x=1:100;
     octave-2.9.12:2> x
     octave-2.9.12:3> plot(x,x.*x)

After much grinding of gears and the smell of burning coal, gnuplot opens a window. ;^)

----------------------

Say, you're using Mac OS X 10.5, which doesn't have X11 --
Are you doing graphics in AquaTerm, and if so,
how did you get gnuplot to work with it? Is there an environment variable (like GNUTERM) to make it work?
(I too have access to a 10.5 machine but couldn't make gnuplot work -- gnuplot complains that an X11R6 library is missing, and exits :^( )

Let me know if I can help.

     Sincerely,

     J. E. Brown  (Mr.)
     The Solar Almanac: This month's events in astronomy
     http://members.aol.com/SolarAlmanac
     Los Alamos, New Mexico  USA

J. E. Brown has been a software engineer for over 20 years.


------------------------------------

In a message dated 9/1/08 12:23:28 PM, address@hidden writes:

Hi -

No, sad to say the suggested fix didn't work and as I had the luxury 
of another machine running 10.5, I haven't had time to pursue the 
problem further on oldG3.  If your diagnosis is correct, maybe a bug 
report is in order --

Thanks to Thomas for his response ~

Stu
On Sep 1, 2008, at 2:37 AM, address@hidden wrote:

>
> PS. The previous e-mail was in reply to your post at:
> http://www.nabble.com/Octave.app-3.0.1-for-Mac-OS-X-td16912388.html#a19094743
>
> --------------------------------
>
> Dear Mr. Edwards,
>
> Any luck with that? I've got the exact same problem (also on Mac OS 
> X 10.3.9).
> Octave 3.0.2 and Octave 2.9.18 are both affected and crash at the 
> same place.
>
> I think Mr. Treichl is missing the point.
> The readlink problem is not fatal -- readlink can be replaced with a 
> 10-line script.
> The point is that Octave (both versions, 3.0.2 and 2.9.18) crash on 
> entry to install_signal_handlers().
>
> I'm betting that Octave is not actually tested on Mac OS X 10.3.
>
> J. E. Brown
> Software Engineer and Tester
>

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