-*- text -*-

				OSWALD
				======

			     version  3.2
			     ------------

Object Oriented Software for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in S-plus
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oswald is a suite of Splus functions and C routines for reading,
manipulating, displaying and analysing longitudinal data.  The
models and analysis routines implemented are discussed in Diggle,
Liang and Zeger (1994): "Analysis of Longitudinal Data", Oxford
University Press.


1. COPYING CONDITIONS
---------------------

OSWALD is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version
2, or (at your option) any later version.  This means you can
re-distribute or modify the software under the terms of the License;
see the file COPYING for more details.  However, since this release of
Oswald is an experimental release for testing and evaluation purposes
(bug reports are more than welcome; see the section BUGS, below), it
would be appreciated if you would refrain from redistributing the
software until it is more stable.

OSWALD is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the license in the file COPYING
for more details.

OSWALD is copyright (C) 1994-1997  David M. Smith and Lancaster
University Department of Mathematics and Statistics.  The GEE and ALR
libraries (contained in the Routines/gee and Routines/alr directories,
and the files Routines/geesrc.q and Routines/alrsrc.q) are Copyright
(C) 1996, V. Carey (carey@biostat.harvard.edu) and Aidan McDermott
of Channing Laboratory, Harvard Medical School.


2. FILES IN THE DISTRIBUTION
----------------------------

Top directory:

	README: This file
	COPYING: Conditions of availablility and use of this software
	INSTALL: Installation instructions
	PROBLEMS: A list of commonly-encountered installation problems
	NEWS: Descriptions of new features to each version
	Makefile: building script for Unix systems
	oswald.q: S Installation file	

	Src (directory): Source for S-plus functions
	Routines (directory): Source for C routines
	Doc (directory): Documentation
	Routines/gee (directory): GEE library
	Routines/alr (directory): ALR library

	ChangeLog (and in subdirectories): Details of source changes.


3. INSTALLATION
---------------

Installation instructions for Dos and Unix machines can be found in
the file INSTALL in the same directory as this file.

Note that while previous versions of Oswald did not include the GEE and
ALR libaries, Oswald version 2.4 and above does include them; there is
no need to install them separately.


4. ATTACHING THE OSWALD LIBRARY
-------------------------------

If you installed Oswald in the "oswald" subdirectory of the S
"library" directory, all you need to do is issue the S command:

	library(oswald)

If you installed it in some other directory, you will need to use the
command:

	library(oswald,lib.loc="PATHNAME")

where PATHNAME is the pathname of the directory which *contains* the
"oswald" sub-directory.

Check that it has been installed correctly by executing the command:

	variogram(olsres(lograts))


5. DOCUMENTATION
----------------

The user manual (in A4 PostScript format) is in Docs/Oswald.ps.  Help
for individual functions defined by Oswald can be obtained with the S
help() function.  Function documentation is also included in the
manual.  The datasets referenced in the manual can be found in the
Data directory, and the Splus objects (the result of reading in the
ASCII file and attaching any necessary groups or tst attributes) are
also supplied.

Detailed documentation on the algorithms used by the function "pcmid"
and "mixed" may be found in Routines/dropoout/dropout.ps and
Routines/mixed/mixed.ps respectively.


6. GETTING THE LATEST VERSION OF OSWALD
---------------------------------------

You can retrieve the latest version of Oswald from the Oswald WWW
page:
	
	http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/Software/Oswald/

Alternatively (and much less reliably) Oswald is available via
anonymous FTP from coopers.lancs.ac.uk (148.88.136.124) in pub/oswald.

Once you have retrieved Oswald, you can join the Oswald electronic
mailing list to be kept informed of new releases.  Send mail to
"oswald-request@lists.lancs.ac.uk" with the word "subscribe" in the
body to be added to the list.


7. BUGS
-------

A list of known bugs may be found in the BUGS file.  Please report any
other bugs, suggestions or other feedback to:

David M. Smith, Oswald maintainer
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Lancaster University
Bailrigg
Lancaster LA1 4YF
UNITED KINGDOM

E-mail: oswald-bugs@lists.lancs.ac.uk

Telephone: +44 1524 593952
Fax:       +44 1524 592681

Please quote the version number (which can be
obtained with Oswald.version()) in any correspondence.

-- 
David M. Smith, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Lancaster University
D.M.Smith@lancaster.ac.uk    +44 1524 593952   www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~smithdm1