--- How to configure Atmlab ---

It is assumed that you have some basic Matlab knowledge. If some of
the concepts here are unfamiliar to you, please try to find the
information in the Matlab documentation. The Matlab web site at 
www.mathworks.com contains a lot of useful information and a good FAQ.

The top folder of Atmlab is below denoted as ATMLAB/.

Atmlab is added to the Matlab search path by calling the function
atmlab_init, which is found in ATMLAB/atmlab. To view the search path, use
the Matlab function path. If you will always be using Atmlab, the
simplest is to include this line in startup.m:

   run( 'ATMLAB/atmlab/atmlab_init' );   

If you have different Matlab environments, and you don't want to add
all the Matlab stuff that you have to the search path, the file
ATMLAB/examples/startup_menu.m gives you some hints on how this 
can be handled.

Matlab looks for startup.m in the folder where it is started. To
ensure that Matlab always finds your startup.m, the Matlab path must
be extended already before calling Matlab. How this is done depends on
the environment (operative system, shell etc.). If you are a bash
user, a line like this will do the job

   export MATLABPATH=/home/patrick/Configure/Matlab:

Some functionality of Atmlab requires personal settings. Most parts of Atmlab
will work without a file with personal settings (but not features involving
arts, most notably qarts and qpack2). There will be an error message if a
needed personal setting is lacking.

The personal settings are handled by a function with name atmlab.
Check out existing fields, and their present settings, by executing

   atmlab;

A description of the field is obtained by

   help atmlab

which also gives instructions on how to use the atmlab function.

The function atmlab_init (that you should run at startup) first sets all
settings fields to be empty and calls then the function atmlab_conf, if
it exists in the search path. The function atmlab_conf is not part of 
Atmlab. The purpose of the function is to set personal settings and 
it shall be placed in a folder outside Atmlab, but inside the Matlab
search path at the moment of calling atmlab_init.

You can put any Matlab stuff you like in atmlab_conf. The most natural
choice is to include calls of atmlab, to set the existing fields to our
preferred choices. For example:

  atmlab( 'SCREEN_WIDTH',  70     );
  atmlab( 'SITE',         'kiruna');
  atmlab( 'VERBOSITY',     2      );
  atmlab( 'WORK_AREA',    '/tmp'  );

One special workspace variable is highly recommended to set in atmlab_conf.
The workspace variable 'SITE' is used to load site-specific settings, such as
locations for datafiles. Valid sites are the directories in
atmlab/site-specific.

If you are configuring atmlab at a site where no site-specific default
configuration exists yet, some subsystems (such as datasets) will only work
after you have defined the location of datasets in the way that is done in
site-specific/kiruna/datasets_init.m.

It is recommended to join the atmlab_dev mailing list. See
https://mailman.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/mailman/listinfo/atmlab_dev.mi for
instructions. In case of questions, write to
atmlab_dev.mi@lists.uni-hamburg.de

Good luck!

Patrick Eriksson
(patrick.eriksson@chalmers.se)
expanded by Gerrit Holl (gerrit.holl@ltu.se)