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1.7       brouard     1: Version IMaCh 0.99
1.5       brouard     2: 
1.1       brouard     3: Interpolated Marlov Chain (IMaCh program)
                      4: 
1.8       brouard     5: This program is licensed under the GNU GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
1.1       brouard     6: 
1.8       brouard     7: The program estimates Life Expectancies from Cross-longitudinal
                      8: studies as well as age-specific forward and backward prevalences in each state.
                      9: The main publications are:
                     10: (1) Lièvre, A. Brouard. N, Heathcote Ch. Estimating Health
                     11: Expectancies from Cross-longitudinal surveys, Mathematical Population Studies, 10(1), 2003, pp. 1-52.
                     12: (2) Nicolas Brouard, 2019, "Theory and applications of backward probabilities and prevalences in cross-longitudinal surveys". In: Arni S. R. Srinivasa Rao (Ed.) and C.R. Rao (Ed.), Handbook of Statistics.
                     13: Integrated population biology and modeling, Part B, Elsevier, p. 435-486.
                     14: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12204/AWltfxMuXMQCvuZmm9UI
1.1       brouard    15: 
1.8       brouard    16: To be brief, for each people interviewed we need the age and 
                     17: state at each interview. Also the month and year of death should be
1.2       brouard    18: known as for birth.  We model the probability to be observed in any
                     19: state at any age via a parametric model and estimate the parameters
                     20: and their confidence interval by maximum likelihood. Many tables and
                     21: graphs are output in HTML. Graphs are built using gnuplot.
                     22: 
1.8       brouard    23: First versions appeared around year 2000. Currently (May 2019)
                     24: version 0.99r19 can run on any Unix, including OS/X and on Windows 10
1.4       brouard    25: (64bit) as well as Windows XP (32bit).
                     26: 
                     27: Binaries are usually provided for OS/X (DMG for 64bit), Linux (rpm)
                     28: and Windows installer (32 and 64bit).
                     29: 
                     30: 
                     31: STRUCTURE of the binary
                     32: 
                     33: IMaCh is a command line program (no time for a GUI) which means that
1.8       brouard    34: it can be run on a shell by "$ imach foo.imach" where foo.imach is your
1.4       brouard    35: 'parameter' file which is a simple text file with a few lines that
                     36: your must edit in order to describe your data as well as your model
                     37: line. In this parameter file you give the name and path of your data
                     38: file which is also a text file.
                     39: 
                     40: Even if it is command line program, most operating systems offer
                     41: simplifications of use:
                     42: 
1.6       brouard    43: - On Windows, you can click on the imach.exe icon (which opens a DOS
                     44: window) and drag your parameter file into the DOS windows and enter
                     45: return. You can use the right click (once your mouse cursor is on an
                     46: foo.imach file) to either edit the parameter file (with notepad) or
1.4       brouard    47: execute this parameter file via imach. At the end of the run, your are
                     48: asked to enter a character and the terminal will not disappear.
                     49: 
1.6       brouard    50: - On OSX, you can click on the IMaCh application and a terminal window will be
                     51:   opened: either type in the name and path of your parameter file or
1.4       brouard    52:   drag it from the finder.
                     53: 
1.6       brouard    54: The output of your run consists in many text files which are grouped
                     55: into a sub-directory having the same name as of your parameter
                     56: filename 'foo'. In addition, you will find two other important files
                     57: on the same directory as your parameter file:
                     58: 
                     59: -1- a text file named 'foo.gp' which is a gnuplot file. This gnuplot
                     60: is automatically runned by imach in order to create the graphs from
                     61: the various result text files.
                     62: 
                     63: You can edit this gnuplot file, customize it at your will and run it
                     64: to get additional figures or modified figures to be published. Just
                     65: click on gnuplot executable and type "load foo.gp" for example.
1.4       brouard    66: 
                     67: Gnuplot is a well known grapher under the GPL license too. As it is
                     68: changing often, the OS/X and Windows installers are providing binaries
                     69: for gnuplot 2.6.5.
                     70: 
1.6       brouard    71: -2- a text file named 'foo.htm' which is an html file. It can be
                     72: opened by your browser and it will display various hyperlinks to most
                     73: of your results as well as your graphs.
                     74: 
                     75: 
1.4       brouard    76: Since the era of 64bit processors and their wide use on OS/X and
                     77: Windows 7, 8 or 10, we discovered that our usual GNU compiler were not
                     78: efficient on Windows 64 and current binaries are compiled with the
                     79: Intel C compiler.  On OS/X the native LLVM C compiler from Apple is
                     80: very efficient too.
                     81: 
1.9     ! brouard    82: Usually IMaCh binaries are distributed under two subdirectories, 'bin'
        !            83: for the binaries which are imach.exe and gnuplot.exe and 'html' for
        !            84: some of the documentation, and 'mytry' in order to test the program on
        !            85: a parameter file named 'mypar.imach'. In order to use IMaCh, you need
        !            86: two text files, one is called the parameter file with extension .imach
        !            87: or .txt which contains few lines and the data file which can be juge
        !            88: according to the number of people surveyed.  You can find in the
        !            89: subdirectory doc of your installed package, some testing files like
        !            90: biaspar.imach and mypar.imach . If you edit such a parameter file, you
        !            91: will see a link to the data file, for exemple data1.txt . You can copy
        !            92: both files, parameter and data file into a private directory. Then run
        !            93: imach and drag the parameter file.
        !            94: 
        !            95: You can access to the main IMaCh server at
        !            96: http://euroreves.ined.fr/imach but the main documentation is a wiki at
        !            97: http://euroreves.ined.fr/imach/wiki .  You can download the latest versions
        !            98: at http://euroreves.ined.fr/imach/Download .
1.3       lievre     99: 
                    100: By default the file 'gnuplot.exe' is located on the same directory as
                    101: imach and is used by imach with its absolute path. Thus, if you have
                    102: another gnuplot program which is already in your path it will not be used by
1.1       brouard   103: imach (we tried to simplify the installation process).
                    104: 
1.3       lievre    105: If you download a newer version of IMaCh, you are supposed to Uninstall the
1.1       brouard   106: former version with the standard Install/Uninstall process of Windows.
                    107: 
                    108: Enjoy (?) using IMaCh.
                    109: 
                    110: You may subscribe to imach-users@listes.ined.fr by sending a mail at
                    111: imach-users-subscribe@listes.ined.fr and you can unsubscribe with a
                    112: mail to imach-users-unsubscribe@listes.ined.fr .
                    113: 
1.2       brouard   114: Other comments are included on the Wiki server
                    115: http://euroreves.ined.fr/imach/wiki, please use it ask questions too.
                    116: 
1.1       brouard   117: Nicolas Brouard (brouard at ined point fr)
1.4       brouard   118: Institut national d'études démographiques
                    119: 133 Boulevard Davout
                    120: 75014 Paris
                    121: 
                    122: Earlier versions were also written by 
                    123: Agnès Lièvre (former PHD student at INED)
                    124: Christopher Heathcote (ANU)
1.1       brouard   125: 
                    126:  
                    127: