Re: Easy Wavelet capability added to Octave core software

[Marc Normandin]

PattiMichelle wrote:
> Marc Normandin wrote:
>> code, or the reputation of its authors.  I think all of these points
>> have significant merit: wavelets have garnered significant attention
>> across many disciples, WaveLab was developed and is still used despite
>> the existence of Matlab's wavelet toolbox, and the WaveLab developers
>> are prominent and highly respected in their field.
>>
>> However, one must keep in mind that these are not sufficient reasons for
>> inclusion in Octave.  Wavelets may be used often and by many, but
>> WaveLab is a large body of code to take on for functionality that many
>> (probably most) Octave users won't use.  IMHO, it would be better suited
>> as an add-on package from Octave-Forge.
>>
>> Licensing is a separate but perhaps more important issue.  WaveLab is
>> released as "freeware", but I couldn't to find any license for the
>> release.  The items I could find appear to have some elements of concern:
>>
>> To paraphrase Wavelab850/Documentation/COPYING.m, redistribution is
>> permitted but the original work must be included in its entirety and the
>> original authors retain copyright on all redistributions, whether
>> verbatim or modified works.
>>
>> And from the Introduction section of documentation available at
>> http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~wavelab/Wavelab_850/AboutWaveLab.pdf,
>> "The library is available free of charge over the Internet by WWW
>> access; instructions are given below. The material is, however,
>> copyrighted, so that advance permission is required for
>> any commercial use."
>>
>> I am not a lawyer, but these terms seem to conflict with Octave's
>> license, the GNU GPL.  Perhaps a "non-free" Octave-Forge package (like
>> Arpack and spline-gcvspl) would be be a possibility.
>>
>>   
>> I don't dispute the importance of wavelets, the quality of the WaveLab
>>> I've been trying to muck through WaveLabOnOctave, but I'm such an Octave
>>> noob - sometimes an Octave guru can do in 5 minutes what would take a
>>> noob a month (or more) to understand and implement.
>>>     
>>
>> I tinkered a bit with WavePath.m, the file that adds the WaveLab code to
>> your [Octave] path.  I made two changes: (1) eliminated the dependence
>> on the "matlabroot" variable by simply requiring that you run the script
>> from the WaveLab directory, and (2) removed some strange markup that
>> existed in the original file.  The modified WavePath.m is attached.
>>
>> Executing this file seems to successfully add all of the WaveLab stuff
>> to the Octave path on my machine.  I didn't try to compile the mex
>> files, but the documentation indicates that the functions should still
>> work, albeit more slowly.  An attempt to run one of the demos failed, it
>> seems that the demo is graphically based and incompatible with Octave
>> graphics (at least with the gnuplot backend that I'm using).  So the
>> demos may be unavailable to you, but the functions that actually perform
>> various analyses should be accessible.
>>
>> Does this help any?
>>
>>   
> Thank you very much, Mark!   Maybe all that needs to be done is a more
> up-to-date wiki on including WaveLab in Octave?  Of course, if someone
> clones Matlab's wavelet toolbox, that may be optional...  Did you do
> this is in the Windows version of Octave (3.0.1)?  I currently use a
> very powerful software called IDL (Interactive Data Language) but it's
> missing several important wavelet capabilities, such as wavelet packets
> and matching pursuit.  What's kept me from moving away from it earlier
> is it has 64-bit addressing, suitable for the huge datasets I have to
> analyze.  For this reason, too, I've been looking at Scilab, but I think
> WaveLab is more capable than Scilab's SWT.  I really like qt-Octave.
> 
> Mostly I study turbulence, compression, and denoising (places where
> wavelets have grown significantly in the last decade).  I will try your
> script as soon as I can, and I think I'll try contacting the WaveLab
> folks, researcher-to-researcher.  Sometimes that helps a lot.
> 
> The Best,
> PattiMichelle
> 
> 

I ran the modified WaveLab.m in Octave 3.0.1 (Debian etch), but it
should work for Windows as well.  Please let me know if you run into any
problems with it.

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Marc D. Normandin              http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mdnorman
Graduate Research Assistant                     address@hidden
Indiana University School of Medicine           317-278-9841 (tel)
Department of Radiology, Division of Research   317-274-1067 (fax)
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