GA TOOLBOX FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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1. GENERAL QUESTIONS

   1.1 'Where can I find information about the GA Toolbox?'

   1.2 'What version(s) of MATLAB does the GA Toolbox work with?'

   1.3 'Do you have a version of the GA Toolbox suitable for
        MATLAB 5/6/7/... available?'

   1.4 'Do you have a MOGA version of the GA Toolbox available?'

   1.5 'How do I use the GA Toolbox to solve my particular problem?'

   1.6 'How can I contact the authors of the GA Toolbox?'

2. DOWNLOAD QUESTIONS

   2.1 'I filled out the download form correctly, and pushed the 
       "Download" button - but I never received the GA Toolbox by 
       email. Why?'

   2.2 'Why does your download form ask for my email address when
        I just want a copy of the GA Toolbox?'

3. INSTALLATION QUESTIONS

   3.1 'How do I install the GA Toolbox?'

4. RUN-TIME QUESTIONS

   4.1 'Why do I get the error message(s):

          "identifier" expected, "switch" found, or

          Illegal use of reserved keyword "switch"

   4.2 'Why do I get the error message(s):

          ??? Undefined function or variable "NonLin", or

          Warning: Reference to uninitialized variable "NonLin"

   4.3 'Why is the function-specific help not working for the
        GA Toolbox functions?'


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ANSWERS TO GA TOOLBOX FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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1. GENERAL QUESTIONS
====================

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1.1 The GA Toolbox homepage is at:

    http://www.shef.ac.uk/acse/research/ecrg/gat.html

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1.2 'What version(s) of MATLAB does the GA Toolbox work with?'

The GA Toolbox was written for MATLAB v4.2. It is usable with all
subsequent releases of MATLAB, but there are some minor syntax
issues that have to be fixed by hand when using the Toolbox with
MATLAB v5.3 and above.

See Section 4 of this FAQ.

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1.3 'Do you have a version of the GA Toolbox suitable for
     MATLAB 5/6/7/... available?'

The GA Toolbox was originally written for MATLAB v4.2, and it
is this version of the Toolbox which we make available for download. 

This version of the Toolbox can be (and has been) successfully 
used with any later release of MATLAB, but, depending on the actual
release of MATLAB being used, some minor syntax fixes may need to be
applied to the Toolbox M files by hand.

See Question 1.2 and Section 4 of this FAQ.

In the future, we *may* make available versions of the GA Toolbox
which have the relevant corrections applied for the various
releases of MATLAB, but these are not yet available.

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1.4 'Do you have a MOGA version of the GA Toolbox available?'

No. 

But, in the future, we *may* make such a version of the 
GA Toolbox available.

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1.5 'How do I use the GA Toolbox to solve my particular problem?'

Whilst we happily make the GA Toolbox available for free download 
and are always interested to hear of your experiences in using it, 
we do *not* have the resources to offer a general GA consulting service.

So we will not reply to email sent to us asking for advice in using 
the toolbox to solve particular problems.

We encourage all users of the GA Toolbox to read carefully the 
accompanying documentation and tutorial examples. For general
'how do I ... ?' questions, we suggest you post a question
to the relevant Usenet group comp.ai.genetic.

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1.6 'How can I contact the authors of the GA Toolbox?'

The authors of the GA Toolbox can be contacted by sending email
to ga-toolbox@acse.sheffield.ac.uk.

We encourage you to send us email about errors you encounter when
using the GA Toolbox, as well as requests for enhancement to the
toolbox, and general comments about your experiences with it.

Please read this FAQ carefully before sending any such email, and
please in particular note Question 1.5 of this FAQ.

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2. DOWNLOAD QUESTIONS
=====================

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2.1 'I filled out the download form correctly, and pushed the 
     "Download" button - but I never received the GA Toolbox by 
     email. Why?'

The GA Toolbox download mechanism works by programatically emailing
a copy of the toolbox to the email address supplied in the
download form. The Toolbox is sent as a MIME attachment in ZIP'ed
format.

If, having filled in the download form using your correct email 
address, you do not receive a copy of the Toolbox by email, then it
is almost certainly the case that *your* email system is
explicitly blocking incoming email which contains ZIP file attachments.
(Some mail administrators like to do this in an attempt to stop 
certain types of email viruses and worms.)

If this is the case, you should ask your mail administrator for advice
on your local email policy.

A workaround is to setup a 'hotmail'-style address and use that
for the GA Toolbox download.

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2.2 'Why does your download form ask for my email address when
     I just want a copy of the GA Toolbox?'

The GA Toolbox download mechanism works by programatically emailing
a copy of the toolbox to the email address supplied in the
download form.

We guarantee that we will not use your email address (or any of the
other information you supply on the download form) for any other
purpose other than to create statistics - purely for internal use - 
about download and usage patterns for the GA Toolbox. None of
the information you supply will be divulged to any third party.

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3. INSTALLATION QUESTIONS
=========================

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3.1 'How do I install the GA Toolbox?'

We advise you to ignore any purported high-level installation
help from MATLAB itself and, instead, to install the toolbox by hand.
If you have a completely local copy of MATLAB on a PC, then this
shouldn't be a problem; if you're using a networked version of MATLAB,
then you may have to get the system administrator to do this process on
the server - alternatively, you can use the toolbox files locally from
your own filestore. 

The details go something like this:

3.1.1 If you have a completely local copy of MATLAB on your PC:

   a. Unzip the GA Toolbox somewhere in your own filestore: it will
      unzip to two folders 'src' and 'doc'.

   b. Rename the 'src' folder to 'genetic' and move it into your
      C:\Matlab_nn\toolbox folder

      (The 'nn' here is whatever your MATLAB version number is.)

   c. Go to your C:\Matlab_nn\toolbox\local directory and locate the
      file 'pathdef.m'. Take a copy of the file for a backup, then
      open the file with a text editor. You will see that it
      specifies the paths to all the toolboxes you have. To add the
      GA toolbox to the path, add the two lines:

        matlabroot,'\toolbox\genetic;',...
        matlabroot,'\toolbox\genetic\test_fns;',...

      in a suitable place.

   d. That's it: if you restart MATLAB should have access to the 
      GA toolbox.;

3.1.2 If you are using a networked copy of MATLAB, then either:

   A. The system administrator should do the same as the above 
       for the system installation of MATLAB,

   - or -

   B. You use the toolbox locally, in this way:

   a. Unzip the GA Toolbox somewhere in your own filestore: it will
      unzip to two folders 'src' and 'doc'.

   b. Rename the 'src' folder to 'genetic'. You might also want to 
      move it somewhere else. Let's say it ends up in
      d:\work\matlab\toolboxes\genetic.

   c. Add the two lines 

        path(path, 'd:\work\matlab\toolboxes\genetic');
        path(path, 'd:\work\matlab\toolboxes\genetic\test_fns');

      to the file 'startup.m' in your working directory. Your working
      dir is going to be something like 'c:\matlab-nn\work' for a
      modern PC installation of MATLAB; you might have to create the
      file 'startup.m' there if it doesn't already exist.

  d. Again, that's it. When you restart MATLAB you should then
     see the GA toolbox.

Note that the process described in 3.1.2.B above is the same thing
you'd do to use your own M scripts: at this level, there is nothing
significant about the fact that the GA scripts are a 'toolbox' -  
they are just a collection of M scripts, and the only issue is getting
their location mapped into the MATLAB path search path. To find out 
more about the MATLAB search path and related matters then, for a 
start, type 'help path' at the MATLAB prompt.

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4. RUN-TIME QUESTIONS
=====================

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4.1 'Why do I get the error message(s):

       "identifier" expected, "switch" found, or

       Illegal use of reserved keyword "switch"

This error message may be encountered when using the 'objfun1' 
function, for example, and reflects one of the syntactical 
differences between MATLAB 6 and previous releases of MATLAB. The
actual error message you see may depend on the actual release
of MATLAB you are using.

The GA toolbox was developed for MATLAB v4.2, and should also 
work unchanged for MATLAB releases up to including v5.2. 
For later releases of MATLAB, some minor syntax fixes may
have to be applied to the M files of the toolbox by hand. These
fixes should generally be obvious to an experienced
user of MATLAB.

In this case, the problem is that, in MATLAB v6, 'switch' is a 
reserved word: in previous versions of MATLAB it was not. 
To fix the problem, edit the relevant M file to change all 
reference to 'switch' to something else like (eg 'myswitch') 
instead.

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4.2 'Why do I get the error message(s):

       ??? Undefined function or variable "NonLin", or

       Warning: Reference to uninitialized variable "NonLin"

The actual error message you see may depend on the actual 
release of MATLAB you are using.

The GA toolbox was developed for MATLAB v4.2, and should also 
work unchanged for MATLAB releases up to including v5.2. 
For later releases of MATLAB, some minor syntax fixes may
have to be applied to the M files of the toolbox by hand. These
fixes should generally be obvious to an experienced
user of MATLAB.

In this case, the problem is that the behaviour of MATLAB
with respect to uninitialized variables differs between MATLAB 
releases.

Please see The Mathworks Technical Solution note on this issue,
namely:

  http://www.mathworks.com/support/solutions/data/1-18GTU.html

and then apply a suitable correction to the relevant M file(s)
of the GA Toolbox.

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4.3 'Why is the function-specific help not working for the
     GA Toolbox functions?'

We have had unconfirmed reports that, when used with certain
releases of MATLAB, function-specific help for the GA Toolbox 
(eg 'help mutate') does not work as expected.

For MATLAB M files, function-specific help information is
encoded in comments within the M files themselves. It may
be that the detail of the allowable layouts of these comments
differs between some of the releases of MATLAB. If you find
that function-specific help is *not* working for you, please
check the documentation for your release of MATLAB, and compare
the detailed requirements for the 'help' comments with the format 
used in the M files of the GA Toolbox.

In addition, if you *do* have this problem, please email 
ga-toolbox@acse.sheffield.ac.uk with the details of your version
of MATLAB so that we can update this FAQ.

The workaround for function-specific help for GA Toolbox
functions not working from the MATLAB command line is simply 
to read the help information contained within the relevant
M files using any text editor.

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