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1.1       brouard     1: Interpolated Marlov Chain (IMaCh program)
                      2: 
1.4     ! brouard     3: This program will be licensed under the GNU GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
1.1       brouard     4: 
                      5: The program estimates Health Expectancies from Cross-longitudinal
                      6: studies.
                      7: The main publication is Lievre, A. Brouard. N, Heathcote
1.2       brouard     8: Ch. Estimating Health Expectancies from Cross-longitudinal surveys,
1.1       brouard     9: Mathematical Population Studies, 10(1), 2003, pp. 1-52.
                     10: 
1.2       brouard    11: To be brief, for each people interviewed we need the age and health
                     12: status at each interview. Also the month and year of death should be
                     13: known as for birth.  We model the probability to be observed in any
                     14: state at any age via a parametric model and estimate the parameters
                     15: and their confidence interval by maximum likelihood. Many tables and
                     16: graphs are output in HTML. Graphs are built using gnuplot.
                     17: 
1.4     ! brouard    18: First versions appeared around year 2000. Currently (September 2015)
        !            19: version 0.98q5 can run on any Unix, including OS/X and on Windows 10
        !            20: (64bit) as well as Windows XP (32bit).
        !            21: 
        !            22: Binaries are usually provided for OS/X (DMG for 64bit), Linux (rpm)
        !            23: and Windows installer (32 and 64bit).
        !            24: 
        !            25: 
        !            26: STRUCTURE of the binary
        !            27: 
        !            28: IMaCh is a command line program (no time for a GUI) which means that
        !            29: it can be run on a shell by $ imach foo.imach where foo.imach is your
        !            30: 'parameter' file which is a simple text file with a few lines that
        !            31: your must edit in order to describe your data as well as your model
        !            32: line. In this parameter file you give the name and path of your data
        !            33: file which is also a text file.
        !            34: 
        !            35: Even if it is command line program, most operating systems offer
        !            36: simplifications of use:
        !            37: 
        !            38: - On Windows, you can click on the imach.exe
        !            39: icon (which opens a DOS window) and drag your parameter file into the
        !            40: DOS windows and enter return. But with the newly installable version
        !            41: (>0.97) you can use the right click (once your mouse cursor is on an
        !            42: foo.imach file) to either edit the parameter file (with wordpad) or
        !            43: execute this parameter file via imach. At the end of the run, your are
        !            44: asked to enter a character and the terminal will not disappear.
        !            45: 
        !            46: - On OSX, you can click on the IMaCh application and terminal will be
        !            47:   open: either type in the name and path of your parameter file or
        !            48:   drag it from the finder.
        !            49: 
        !            50: The output of you run is a lot of text files which are grouped into a
        !            51: sub-directory having the name of your parameter file as well as an
        !            52: other text file foo.gp which is a gnuplot file. This gnuplot is run by
        !            53: imach and creates a lot of graphs from the various results text files.
        !            54: An other important file named foo.htm can be opened by your browser
        !            55: and it will display various hyperlinks to most of your results as well
        !            56: as your graphs.
        !            57: 
        !            58: You can edit this file, customize it at your will and run it to get
        !            59: additional figures or modified figures to be published. Just click on
        !            60: gnuplot.exe and type "load foo.gp" for example.
        !            61: 
        !            62: Gnuplot is a well known grapher under the GPL license too. As it is
        !            63: changing often, the OS/X and Windows installers are providing binaries
        !            64: for gnuplot 2.6.5.
        !            65: 
        !            66: Since the era of 64bit processors and their wide use on OS/X and
        !            67: Windows 7, 8 or 10, we discovered that our usual GNU compiler were not
        !            68: efficient on Windows 64 and current binaries are compiled with the
        !            69: Intel C compiler.  On OS/X the native LLVM C compiler from Apple is
        !            70: very efficient too.
        !            71: 
        !            72: Usually IMaCh binaries are distributed under two subdirectories, 'bin' for the
        !            73: binaries which are imach.exe and gnuplot.exe and 'html' for some of the
1.1       brouard    74: documentation, and 'mytry' in order to test the program on a parameter
1.4     ! brouard    75: file named 'mypar.imach'.
1.3       lievre     76: 
                     77: By default the file 'gnuplot.exe' is located on the same directory as
                     78: imach and is used by imach with its absolute path. Thus, if you have
                     79: another gnuplot program which is already in your path it will not be used by
1.1       brouard    80: imach (we tried to simplify the installation process).
                     81: 
1.3       lievre     82: If you download a newer version of IMaCh, you are supposed to Uninstall the
1.1       brouard    83: former version with the standard Install/Uninstall process of Windows.
                     84: 
                     85: Enjoy (?) using IMaCh.
                     86: 
                     87: You may subscribe to imach-users@listes.ined.fr by sending a mail at
                     88: imach-users-subscribe@listes.ined.fr and you can unsubscribe with a
                     89: mail to imach-users-unsubscribe@listes.ined.fr .
                     90: 
1.2       brouard    91: Other comments are included on the Wiki server
                     92: http://euroreves.ined.fr/imach/wiki, please use it ask questions too.
                     93: 
1.1       brouard    94: Nicolas Brouard (brouard at ined point fr)
1.4     ! brouard    95: Institut national d'études démographiques
        !            96: 133 Boulevard Davout
        !            97: 75014 Paris
        !            98: 
        !            99: Earlier versions were also written by 
        !           100: Agnès Lièvre (former PHD student at INED)
        !           101: Christopher Heathcote (ANU)
1.1       brouard   102: 
                    103:  
                    104: