[Mathlib-develop] JMathLib installation

[bb-543437 <bb-...@ve...>]

I am new to JMathLib and I am a confident linux user. I downloaded 
MathLib version 0.9.0 and tried to setup. As it is running now, I have 
to say that is a very nice piece of code. Java frees from the trouble 
with every new version of C-Compilers and missing libraries with every 
new version of the OS. ( I have this problem actually with the new 
version of openSUSE 11 with some other software.)  I am very curious 
about the performance. (Anyone knows: Java is slow and the earth is a 
disk.)

In the pdf-manual there is a start sequence described with the input of
Classes>>java MathLib.MathlibGUI.GUI
That is wrong. First I tried some renaming of directories, but that 
gives some confusion with other pathes. The input must be
Classes>>java MathLib.GUI.GUI
That costed me some time because I tried to setup JMathLib by the 
shell-script make.linux.sh after that bad succes in the first run.

make.linux.sh does not work after download. It is a well known effect 
that text files saved under Windows do not work with linux. (The reason 
is that there are different codes for the line break. The solution is to 
mark the full text and copy it into an empty document and save it again.)
I do not understand the line
JAVAC_OPTS="-classpath \$CLASSPATH\$Classpath\$classpath:. -d ../Classes"
as in Linux there are very often set so called "hard links", that are 
unknown in Windows (afaik). So the system variable CLASSPATH is empty. 
Another point is that command "find . | grep ".Java"" cannot and does 
not find any files to compile, because all subdirectories under Classes 
only have Class files. So this script is absolutely useless in the 
directory Classes. One more problem is the trial to write the class 
files to the Java library via CLASSPATH (    echo -n $JAVAC_OPTS "" >> 
$NEW_FILE) , because the lib-directory is only readable for the normal 
user. Only root (that is the administrator) can write to that directory. 
That differs completely from the Windows system where java usually is 
installed on C:, wher every user has access. I am not a real shell 
coder, so may be I do not understand the script completely.

I have not jet read the manual but I hope that there are some more 
explanations to write own functions?

I would recommend to correct that error in the pdf - many users will be 
discouraged.

Regards

BB