New optics functions, was: Re: Contributing to octave-forge

[Martin Vogel]

>>> If you want to contribute a package the information you referred to is 
>>> still relatively up to date
>>> except that in addition to the subversion repository now we also have 
>>> separate mercurial repositories
>>> for some of the packages ...
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> I just want to reformat the documentation text according to your
>> standards before submission. Any idea for an existing M-file that you
>> think is an example for good documentation? Most of my functions have
>> several parameter list options...
>>
>> Martin
> 
> I'm not really sure what would be a great example of how to write docstrings, 
> but examples of m-files with quite complex input/output options documentation
> are for example "gmres.m" or "pkg.m".
> 
>   
> http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/doc_002dgmres.html#doc_002dgmres
>   
> http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Installing-and-Removing-Packages.html#doc_002dpkg
> 
> To improve documentation it is also usefule to add tests and demos in your 
> function:
> 
>   
> http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Test-and-Demo-Functions.html#Test-and-Demo-Functions
> 
> c.
> 

Dear Octavists,

it took me a while to get going, but now, I just submitted the promised
functions for optical calculations following the Mueller-Stokes and
Jones formalism:

https://savannah.gnu.org/patch/index.php?8278

All three subdirectories of "inst/" must be on the path, then "demo
mueller_stokes" or "demo jones" will give you some demonstration what
the library is about. Further information can be found in Wikipedia,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_calculus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes_vectors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_calculus

I tried my best to have each function with its own documentation.
As I plan to add further library functions (more elements, a different
section for paraxial calculations using the famous ABCD-matrices, ...),
the submitted code may serve as a nucleus to a new package "optics".

I'd be happy to help as its maintainer, if there is a need for that job,
but I'd need some initial help to set it up as such...

Thank you all for an excellent job providing us with Octave,

Martin