The Yorick programming language includes scientific visualization functions (with output to your screen, PostScript, or binary CGM), text and binary I/O functions for reading and writing numbers by the millions, and basic linear algebra functions adapted from the LAPACK library. Owing to Yorick's array syntax, interpreted programs are compact, nearly free of explicit loops, and can run at speeds up to 20% of optimized compiled speed (maybe that shouldn't impress you, I dunno). That means Yorick is fast enough to do respectable calculations by itself, and to be used as a pre- and post-processor for state-of-the-art physics simulation codes, as we do in the ICF program at LLNL . Yorick runs on UNIX workstations or mainframes, on MacIntosh Power PC or 68K machines, and on Windows NT/95. Vist the yorick home site ftp://ftp-icf.llnl.gov/pub/Yorick/; see the yorick-ANNOUNCE for a more detailed advertisement for Yorick, and yorick-NEWS for up to date information and patches.
Ed Williams collected and organized a large body of my Yorick e-mail correspondence into a useful Yorick FAQ.
A typical Yorick graphics screen looks like this picture of the streamlines and pressure field around an airfoil (taken from demo4.i). The pressure field is an example of a filled mesh plot, the streamlines are contours, and the outline of the airfoil is a simple x-y plot.
The easiest way to get Yorick for UNIX is to build the UNIX source distribution. You will need the GNU gzip and tar utilities to unpack it, and an ANSI C compiler and the X Window System libraries to build it. The following command lines will unpack the distribution, configure it for your system, build it, run it's diagnostic test suite, and install it (in the directory where you built it):
gzip -dc yorick.tar.gz | tar xvf - gzip -dc yorick.diff.gz | patch -N -p0 cd yorick-?.? # (?.? is version number, eg 1.4) (...Read the README file in this directory...) ./configure --prefix=here make make check make install
The second line applies patches to fix bugs in the distribution. This patch file is very small; you should pick up the latest version from ftp://ftp-icf.llnl.gov/pub/Yorick/yorick.diff.gz before you build Yorick. You can get the larger distribution file yorick*.tar.gz from many Internet sites, or even better from CDROMs. (Any CDROM which includes the Debian Linux distribution will have an equivalent file called yorick_?.?.orig.tar.gz, for example. Any CDROM including the sunsite Linux archive will have yorick-?.?.src.tar.gz.)
There is a Linux x86 binary distribution of Yorick. Untar it in / as root to install Yorick in /usr. Debian users will prefer the (identical) Debian package available with the Debian 1.3 (bo) distribution. The disadvantage of these is that you won't have the latest patches; I keep the Debian binary distribution most up-to-date.
If you are running MacOS 8.5 or later on a PPC Macintosh, use macintosh/yor14vr4b1.sea.bin . If you have CodeWarrior, you can download the source code from macintosh/yor_src_14vr4b1.sea.bin. More details about installing and running Yorick on a Macintosh may be found at macintosh/yorick-mac-intro.
There are also three Macintosh binary distributions of Yorick for old MacOSes or 68k machines: native Power PC version, 68K with FPU version, or 68K with no FPU version.
There is a binary version for Windows 95 or NT (Intel) or (DEC alpha NT), distributed as a self-extracting archive. The source code for the Windows (Intel) version is also available. Instructions for installing the windows version are in the file README.txt . There is a beta version of Windows yorick that includes an OpenGL 3D graphics package at win_95_nt/yor14glb1.exe.
Please browse the Yorick user manual to get a better idea of what Yorick can do. The Nov/Dec 1995 issue of Computers in Physics features a article about Yorick as well. A tarball of the entire HTML manual, plus Web-browsable versions of the ".doc" files, and a PDF version of the quick reference cards is at ydoc.tgz. Thanks to Robert Cannon for the HTML and to Ed Williams for the PDF.
Yorick is available at the following archive sites:
The MacIntosh version of Yorick is available at:
There are many CDROM collections of the Sumex-AIM archive; these will contain the Mac binary distribution of Yorick. Similarly, CDROM collections of the Sunsite Linux archives will contain the UNIX source distribution as well as the Linux binary distribution.
I keep a list of known bugs and installation problems on ftp-icf:
If you repair a bug or have constructive comments, send e-mail to David H. Munro at munro@icf.llnl.gov. The MacIntosh port was done by Steven H. Langer, shl@icf.llnl.gov.
You can also subscribe to the Yorick mailing list by sending the message
If you write an interesting, self-documenting Yorick include file, please tell me about it at munro@icf.llnl.gov. I will try to collect useful programs to be part of the next distribution.
