What's Available?
The help links in the navigation bar to the left lead to the complete online documentation for yorick, including a manual, a function index, a keyword list, a language Quick Reference, plus some examples and a cookbook.
The Download links lead to the yorick Sourceforge project page, where you will find the complete source and binary distributions for yorick on UNIX, MS Windows, and MacIntosh computers. The complete online documentation tree can also be downloaded for local reference. The project page also offers downloads of yorick plugins and external packages,contributed by yorick users, but not yet integrated into the yorick distribution.
Development Environment: This page leads to a description of the yorick development environment, which is David Munro's suggestion for how to prepare and execute yorick source code. Alternatively, you can download and use rlterm or, even better, rlwrap, which are utilities to run yorick with file name completion, command line recall, etc (both need the readline library).
Yorick Help
There are a number of resources you can browse on this site for yorick help:
- Examples shows a couple of example, with results and code. This does not really belong to the help per say, but it can be a good start if you don't know yorick.
- The yorick Manual is a htlp version of yorick.pdf, heartily recommended.
- Cookbook includes step by step instructions on how to make yorick do things in the real world.
- The Index contains a list of all the yorick routines in the standard distribution.
- Keywords shows a list of (rather arbitrary) keywords and links to functions relative to these keywords.
- The QuickRef is a html version of refs.pdf. A brief (6 pages) reminder sheet on the main yorick functions. It's a life saver for yorick newbies.
- Finally, the advanced FAQ will give you more insight on yorick internal. Read that only if you have already a good knowledge of this language. It is not a beginner how-to.
Getting Started
If you aren't sure whether you can use yorick at all, read about the flow past an airfoil or the motion of a drumhead examples. These are standalone yorick programs; yorick is also very useful as a postprocessor for much larger simulation codes. Finally, yorick can be used in combination with presentation or desktop publishing software to produce the figures accompanying a scientific talk or paper. If you know what to do with a PostScript graphic, you can begin using yorick immediately.
The first thing to read is the first chapter of the user manual. If you are still interested in yorick, download it so you can reread the manual while typing in the examples to see how yorick works first hand. You will want to read about the yorick development environment as well. To follow along online, you should probably download all this documentation as well, which you can do from the downloads page.
To complete your introduction to yorick, run and study the demo programs:
- demo1.i
- 1D hydrodynamics code, simulates sound and shock waves
- demo2.i
- 2D wave equation solver, simulates motion of a drumhead
- demo3.i
- chaotic pendulum simulation, inspired by SF Exploratorium
- demo4.i
- 2D flow past and airfoil using analytic functions
- demo5.i
- demonstration of how to use 2D graphics for 3D effects
