Online Documentation for MATLAB (xterm and home)
March 9, 1998

Dr. Kris Stewart (stewart@cs.sdsu.edu)
San Diego State University
Education Center on Computational Science & Engineering,
LLA 73 (when I'm not at BAM 223 for office hours)

This URL is http://www.stewart.cs.sdsu.edu/cs205/module6/index.html

I have just now figured out how to access the online documentation for MATLAB in a manner that will be useful both from the Xterm Lab (BA113 or Library or Engineering or ...) and from your home, if you happen to have an account which provides modem access to SDSU and a web browser to use from home. Where are the labs on campus? General Access Microcomputer and/or Terminal Labs

On line documentation is available within the Xwindows environment in BA 113

Start up MATLAB from a UNIX window and type doc

On line doc via the web

This will involve a couple of steps and I cannot automate it for you.

1. Start up Netscape
2. Enter the url: ftp://masc0242@rohan.sdsu.edu/opt/matlab5/help/docroadmap.html Look very carefully at the screen. You will be prompted for the password to logging into your class account on Rohan.
3. Choose the entry Getting Started with MATLAB

Web-based interface to your own class account files

Note: using the FTP (file transfer protocol) within the Web browser also provides a convenient interface to your student account on Rohan. ftp://masc0242@rohan.sdsu.edu

More fun things to do.

Using ftp:// within the Web Browser will let you do all the things that the Web Browser facilities - such as save files. Of course, this time it will be to the computing platform where your browser is running, i.e. your home computer.

ftp to student account /opt/matlab5/help/docroadmap.html

I would like everyone to set up their own access point to the on-line documentatio for MathWorks. As you discovered in lab on Monday (3/9/98), you are prompted for your password only once and then can access all possible information on Rohan that your username/password gives you permission for.

ftp access to /opt/matlab5/help/techdoc/ref

This has EVERY MATLAB command with a short html document.

Getting Started with MATLAB

This is a very useful starting point to pursue online introductions.

I would like to ask you to set up a bookmark for your own account access.

As you explore the On-Line MATLAB documentation, you may run into files with the pdf extension. This refers to Adobe's Portable Data Format (PDF). If you have a computer at home, you can download the Macintosh or the IBM/PC version of Adobe's Acrobat Reader for free. Once installed on your home machine, this helper application will be used automatically by Netscape (or whatever browser you use) to interpret files with pdf extension.

Many of the documents made available at SDSU on the Rohan webserver rohan.sdsu.edu are coded as PDF. You can access the Adobe Acrobat home page and select the free Acrobat Reader for your computing platform (IBM/PC Windows NT, Windows 95; Macintosh; LINUX; Sun Sparc and other UNIX platforms; even OS2/WARP. Another noteworthy property of Adobe Acrobat Reader is the lengthy list of languages (foreign languages, not computer languages) it supports (English, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, German, Swedish).

I had not found a way to make this documentation source easily accessible (both from the Xterm Lab and from other locations) until now. But this weekend I finally got it!