NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Request for computer help.
From: W F Jones
Date: 2005 Sep 6, 22:53 -0400
From: W F Jones
Date: 2005 Sep 6, 22:53 -0400
My 2-cents worth follows:
I like free and open source software. You may want to consider
using Knoppix Linux or one of the other numerous distributions for
your operating system. The LiveCD approach seems good and you
can modify your CD to include only applications you need. There
are several options usually available for booting these smaller sized
Linux distributions.
For math, consider SciLab and Octave. I think these applications
also have binaries available for Windows if you wish to use XP.
Octave may provide better compatibility with MatLab however, I am
not sure Octave is an active project these days. MuPad is also
interesting but I recall it is tailored for symbolic calculations.
GnuPlot is also recommended as part of your tool-kit.
You may need to install CygWin for some of the above applications
if you want to use it in the Windows environment. I haven't used
that in a long time but I think the available documentation is good
here.
An internet search will yield plenty of information and is generally
readable even if you're not a computer whiz. I prefer Linux and
SciLab for an inexpensive and universal approach to math
calculations.
SciLab has a relatively active news group that you can pose specific
questions to and usually find prompt help from users with a real
mathematic background. Subscribe to comp.soft-sys.math.scilab
news group if interested.
Finally, I rarely use the above but have run them on occasion. I use
a commercial package (MathCad) provided by my employer.
MatLab is also very popular where I work. In my humble opinion,
Excel is probably the most powerful math tool available for
engineers and scientists. It is still a killer-app but may be a little
difficult to program...
I have mumbled long enough and know it, please accept my
apologies and good luck in your search.
Frank J
>...snip...
> Some recent postings on Nav-l have included listings of programs. This
> has prompted me to ask for suggestions from list members about
> suitable programs for doing simple calculations on a home computer.
> ...snip...
> George.
>
-- Frank
