WARNING: There is absolutely no warranty for this software
package. See the file COPYING for details.

This is a beta version working up to 2.0 of PerlDL.
-----------------------------------------------------


Blurb
-----

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. C<$a=$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.


Installation
------------

Please read the file INSTALL for information on how to configure
and install.

Once you have built PDL and either installed it or done 'make doctest',
try

	perl -Mblib perldl

to get the interactive pdl shell. In this shell, 'help' gives you
access to PDL documentation for each function separately 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/  	should be fairly stable.
Graphics/PG 	works, should be stable
Graphics/TriD	works, but some of the interfaces might still change.
Lib/Opt/Simplex	works
Lib/PCA.pm, ICA.pm, PCARout, DataPresenter
		These are alpha stage. Don't use if you don't know
		what you're doing
Lib/Slatec
		Should in principle work but porting is difficult.
		If you can't compile it, remove it from Lib/Makefile.PL
IO/Misc		Stable, expected to work
IO/FastRaw	seems to work & be stable.

Comments are welcome - so are volunteers to write code! Please contact the
developers mailing list perldl@jach.hawaii.edu (subscription address: 
perldl-request@jach.hawaii.edu) with ideas and suggestions.

	Tuomas J. Lukka (lukka@fas.harvard.edu)
        Karl Glazebrook (kgb@aaoepp.aao.gov.au)


Acknowledgement
---------------

m51.fits is included as a demonstration by kind permission of IRAF
group at the National Optical and Astronomical Observatories, in particular
Pat Schweitzer, who retain ownership.




