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Annotation of imach/src/README.txt, revision 1.5

1.5     ! brouard     1: TEST Version IMaCh 0.99
        !             2: Parameter files have new undocumented parameters.
        !             3: Look at the archives of imach-users@listes.ined.fr for information.
        !             4: 
        !             5: Current documentation on the web site is for 0.98 (before the
        !             6: introduction of varying covariates).
        !             7: 
1.1       brouard     8: Interpolated Marlov Chain (IMaCh program)
                      9: 
1.4       brouard    10: This program will be licensed under the GNU GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
1.1       brouard    11: 
                     12: The program estimates Health Expectancies from Cross-longitudinal
                     13: studies.
                     14: The main publication is Lievre, A. Brouard. N, Heathcote
1.2       brouard    15: Ch. Estimating Health Expectancies from Cross-longitudinal surveys,
1.1       brouard    16: Mathematical Population Studies, 10(1), 2003, pp. 1-52.
                     17: 
1.2       brouard    18: To be brief, for each people interviewed we need the age and health
                     19: status at each interview. Also the month and year of death should be
                     20: known as for birth.  We model the probability to be observed in any
                     21: state at any age via a parametric model and estimate the parameters
                     22: and their confidence interval by maximum likelihood. Many tables and
                     23: graphs are output in HTML. Graphs are built using gnuplot.
                     24: 
1.4       brouard    25: First versions appeared around year 2000. Currently (September 2015)
                     26: version 0.98q5 can run on any Unix, including OS/X and on Windows 10
                     27: (64bit) as well as Windows XP (32bit).
                     28: 
                     29: Binaries are usually provided for OS/X (DMG for 64bit), Linux (rpm)
                     30: and Windows installer (32 and 64bit).
                     31: 
                     32: 
                     33: STRUCTURE of the binary
                     34: 
                     35: IMaCh is a command line program (no time for a GUI) which means that
                     36: it can be run on a shell by $ imach foo.imach where foo.imach is your
                     37: 'parameter' file which is a simple text file with a few lines that
                     38: your must edit in order to describe your data as well as your model
                     39: line. In this parameter file you give the name and path of your data
                     40: file which is also a text file.
                     41: 
                     42: Even if it is command line program, most operating systems offer
                     43: simplifications of use:
                     44: 
                     45: - On Windows, you can click on the imach.exe
                     46: icon (which opens a DOS window) and drag your parameter file into the
                     47: DOS windows and enter return. But with the newly installable version
                     48: (>0.97) you can use the right click (once your mouse cursor is on an
                     49: foo.imach file) to either edit the parameter file (with wordpad) or
                     50: execute this parameter file via imach. At the end of the run, your are
                     51: asked to enter a character and the terminal will not disappear.
                     52: 
                     53: - On OSX, you can click on the IMaCh application and terminal will be
                     54:   open: either type in the name and path of your parameter file or
                     55:   drag it from the finder.
                     56: 
1.5     ! brouard    57: The output of your run is a lot of text files which are grouped into a
1.4       brouard    58: sub-directory having the name of your parameter file as well as an
                     59: other text file foo.gp which is a gnuplot file. This gnuplot is run by
                     60: imach and creates a lot of graphs from the various results text files.
                     61: An other important file named foo.htm can be opened by your browser
                     62: and it will display various hyperlinks to most of your results as well
                     63: as your graphs.
                     64: 
                     65: You can edit this file, customize it at your will and run it to get
                     66: additional figures or modified figures to be published. Just click on
                     67: gnuplot.exe and type "load foo.gp" for example.
                     68: 
                     69: Gnuplot is a well known grapher under the GPL license too. As it is
                     70: changing often, the OS/X and Windows installers are providing binaries
                     71: for gnuplot 2.6.5.
                     72: 
                     73: Since the era of 64bit processors and their wide use on OS/X and
                     74: Windows 7, 8 or 10, we discovered that our usual GNU compiler were not
                     75: efficient on Windows 64 and current binaries are compiled with the
                     76: Intel C compiler.  On OS/X the native LLVM C compiler from Apple is
                     77: very efficient too.
                     78: 
                     79: Usually IMaCh binaries are distributed under two subdirectories, 'bin' for the
                     80: binaries which are imach.exe and gnuplot.exe and 'html' for some of the
1.1       brouard    81: documentation, and 'mytry' in order to test the program on a parameter
1.4       brouard    82: file named 'mypar.imach'.
1.3       lievre     83: 
                     84: By default the file 'gnuplot.exe' is located on the same directory as
                     85: imach and is used by imach with its absolute path. Thus, if you have
                     86: another gnuplot program which is already in your path it will not be used by
1.1       brouard    87: imach (we tried to simplify the installation process).
                     88: 
1.3       lievre     89: If you download a newer version of IMaCh, you are supposed to Uninstall the
1.1       brouard    90: former version with the standard Install/Uninstall process of Windows.
                     91: 
                     92: Enjoy (?) using IMaCh.
                     93: 
                     94: You may subscribe to imach-users@listes.ined.fr by sending a mail at
                     95: imach-users-subscribe@listes.ined.fr and you can unsubscribe with a
                     96: mail to imach-users-unsubscribe@listes.ined.fr .
                     97: 
1.2       brouard    98: Other comments are included on the Wiki server
                     99: http://euroreves.ined.fr/imach/wiki, please use it ask questions too.
                    100: 
1.1       brouard   101: Nicolas Brouard (brouard at ined point fr)
1.4       brouard   102: Institut national d'études démographiques
                    103: 133 Boulevard Davout
                    104: 75014 Paris
                    105: 
                    106: Earlier versions were also written by 
                    107: Agnès Lièvre (former PHD student at INED)
                    108: Christopher Heathcote (ANU)
1.1       brouard   109: 
                    110:  
                    111: