readme

This toolbox contains Matlab code for several graph and mesh partitioning methods, including geometr

This is a Matlab interface to Hendrickson and Leland's "Chaco" graph
partitioning software (version 2.0).  The interface is part of Gilbert
and Teng's Matlab mesh partitioning toolbox.  It runs under Matlab
version 4.2c or later.  See the references below for more information.

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Installation instructions:

1.  Unpack the partitioning toolbox from "meshpart.uu".  (You've
    probably already done this.)  This creates a directory "meshpart"
    full of m-files, with a subdirectory "chaco" containing a copy
    of this README and the other files listed below. 
2.  Put the "meshpart" directory on your Matlab path.  At this point
    you can use all of the mesh partitioning toolbox except Chaco.
3.  Unpack the Chaco distribution (not included here) per the 
    instructions in its manual.  Don't put it in the meshpart/chaco
    directory; put it wherever else you want to.
4.  In the meshpart/chaco directory, edit "Makefile" per the 
    instructions contained in it, to reflect the locations of Chaco 
    and Matlab and any necessary changes.
5.  In the meshpart/chaco directory, utter "make".  This compiles 
    everything and puts "mlchaco.mexsol" in the meshpart directory.
6.  After testing everything, utter "make clean" to delete the
    object files.

This has been tested on Sun workstations running Solaris 2.5, using 
gcc 2.7.2 and Matlab 4.2c, with Chaco 2.0.  It should be fairly simple 
to modify the Makefile to create a mex-file for any Unix system.  
    
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The mex-file version of Chaco includes the following files.  All names
are relative to the subdirectory "chaco" of the mesh partitioning
toolbox directory.

 README is this file.
 Makefile builds the Matlab version of Chaco.
 ../chaco.m is the m-file interface.
 ../mlchaco.m is the help text for mlchaco.mex.
 mlchaco.c is the glue between chaco.m and Chaco's "interface" routine.
 User_Params.verbose can be copied to "../User_Params" to make Chaco print 
    some information about what it's doing.  See the Chaco manual for details.
 User_Params.debug can be copied to "../User_Params" to make Chaco print even
    more information.
 user_params.c replaces the version in Chaco: it changes some defaults, 
    including turning off most normal output.
 smalloc.c replaces the version in Chaco: it uses Matlab's mxCalloc and 
    mxFree instead of malloc and free.
 bail.c replaces the version in Chaco: it returns to Matlab instead of
    exiting.
 check_input.c replaces the version in Chaco: it calls "chaco_check_graph"
    instead of "check_graph" to avoid a name conflict with an internal
    Matlab routine.
 chaco_check_graph.c replaces check_graph.c in Chaco; it's identical 
    except for the name, which conflicts with an internal Matlab routine.


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References:

Chaco is described in B. Hendrickson and R. Leland, "The Chaco
User's Guide (Version 2.0)", Sandia National Laboratories report
SAND94-2692, October 1994.  Inquiries about obtaining Chaco 
should be directed to Bruce Hendrickson, [e-mail].

The Matlab Mesh Partitioning Toolbox (which includes this interface
to Chaco but not Chaco itself) is described in J. Gilbert, G. Miller,
and S. Teng, "Geometric Mesh Partitioning:  Implementation and 
Experiments", Xerox PARC report CSL-94-13, 1994.  The report is
available as

  ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/gilbert/csl9413.ps.Z

and the Toolbox is 

  ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/gilbert/meshpart.uu

Inquiries about the Toolbox should be directed to John Gilbert,
[e-mail].

Chaco is copyrighted by Sandia Corporation.  The Mesh Partitioning
Toolbox is copyright (c) 1990-1996 by Xerox Corporation; for its
complete copyright and licensing notice see the file copyright.m
in the meshpart directory.