jhandles is a graphics package for octave that provides a handle-based
graphics system similar to Matlab. This package is based on Java for
the windowing environment and OpenGL for 3D rendering.

Requirements
------------

  * Java Runtime Environment >= 1.2

  * Java interface package for Octave: available as an octave-forge
    package

  * JOGL: OpenGL interface library for Java (https://jogl.dev.java.net)



Installation
------------

This package as well as the java interface package should be installed
as regular octave-forge package.

JOGL should be installed in such a way that it is accessible to the
Java runtime engine and this package. Under Windows, the easiest is to
copy the jogl.jar file into the installation directory of this package
(where jhandles.jar is located) and to copy the .dll files into the
octave binary directory. A similar procedure should be used for UNIX
systems (although it has not been tested under such system), with the
difference that shared libs should be copied into a location accessible
from the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable (like the location of the shared libs
of octave).



Problems
--------

This package is in alpha stage, so don't expect too much from it; but
you can expect mnay bugs...

Testing has only been done under Windows; there's a high probability
that it does not work under UNIX systems.

Under Windows, switching between windows using ALT+Tab keys produces
a problem when closing a figure with the 'x' top-right button (the
problem actually lies in the readline library). It's safe to close
a window at octave prompt with "close" command.

Octave does not close figure windows automatically when exiting. You
have to close manually all windows before exiting, otherwise octave
might hang.
