++ WARNING: There is absolutely no warranty for this software ++ ++ package. See the file COPYING for details. ++ Important reading ----------------- Please check the following files for further information *BEFORE* sending us your questions: INSTALL detailed installation instructions Known_problems check before you report compilation problems DEPENDENCIES Other software that PDL relies on (and where to get it) perldl.conf PDL configuration options Basic/Pod/FAQ.pod the FAQ in pod format try 'perldoc PDL::FAQ' after installation Basic/Pod/Impatient.pod a quick overview of PDL try 'perldoc PDL::Impatient' after installation Basic/Pod/BadValues.pod a discussion of the bad value support in PDL PDL::Index a guide to PDL documentation !only available *after* successful installation! try 'perldoc PDL::Index' DEVELOPMENT how to participate in the development of PDL Release_Notes a list of issues with regard to the current version always worth checking! *Note* that most PDL documentation is available online within the perldl shell. Try the help command within the shell! PDL -- the package ------------------ The perlDL project aims to turn perl into an efficient numerical language for scientific computing. The PDL module gives standard perl the ability to COMPACTLY store and SPEEDILY manipulate the large N-dimensional data sets which are the bread and butter of scientific computing. e.g. $a=$b+$c can add two 2048x2048 images in only a fraction of a second. The aim is to provide tons of useful functionality for scientific and numeric analysis. Check the pdl web site at http://pdl.perl.org for more information. Installation ------------ Please read the file INSTALL for detailed information on how to configure and install PDL. Once you have built PDL and either installed it or done 'make doctest', try either perl -Mblib perldl from within the root of the PDL tree or just perldl if you have installed PDL already ('make install') to get the interactive pdl shell. In this shell, 'help' gives you access to PDL documentation for each function separately ('help help' for more about this) and 'demo' gives you some basic examples of what you can do. Notes ----- Directory structure: Basic/ - The stuff that PDL would be no use without Lib/ - The stuff that PDL would still be useful without but which makes PDL even more useful Graphics/ - The stuff that PDL needs to make pictures IO/ - The stuff that PDL needs to write and read strange files The new organization makes it possible in the future to make "PDL-Lite" (just the Basic/ directory) if that seems necessary. This distribution has parts at different levels of completion - usually they are marked in the docs but here is a brief rundown of what is good and what is something you need to know what you're doing to use: Basic/ stable Graphics/PGPLOT stable (an updated version, with an OO interface, is in the works) Graphics/TriD recently undergone a major update. Lib/Opt/Simplex works Lib/Slatec Should in principle work but porting is difficult. If you can't compile it, remove it from Lib/Makefile.PL Lib/GSL Interface to the Random distributions of the GNU Scientific Library. You might have to modify the perldl.conf file so PDL knows were to find the lib and include directories when building PDL. See DEPENDENCIES file for more info. IO/Misc stable IO/FastRaw stable. Comments are welcome - so are volunteers to write code! Please contact the developers mailing list pdl-porters@jach.hawaii.edu (subscription address: pdl-porters-request@jach.hawaii.edu) with ideas and suggestions. Tuomas J. Lukka (lukka@fas.harvard.edu) Karl Glazebrook (kgb@aaoepp.aao.gov.au) Compilation Reports: -------------------- The CPAN Testers' result page provides a database showing the results of compiling PDL and many other CPAN packages on multiple platforms. See http://www.perl.org/cpan-testers/results.cgi Acknowledgement --------------- m51.fits is included as a demonstration by kind permission of IRAF group at the National Optical and Astronomical Observatories, in particular Pat Seitzer, who retain ownership.