*** This file is located in the KnotPlot Home Directory. *** *** The information in this file is relevant to UNIX systems. *** Copy the KnotPlot home ---------------------- First copy the KnotPlot home directory to a suitable location on your computer. Next you have to let KnotPlot know where its home is. Setting Environment Variables ----------------------------- KnotPlot is configured to automatically find its home directory at several institutions. If your institution isn't on this list you will have to set the environment variable KNOTPLOT_HOME to point to the place you installed the KnotPlot home directory. You can do this in your ~/.cshrc file by adding a line such as setenv KNOTPLOT_HOME /usr/package/knotplot or whatever. KnotPlot will not execute if it cannot find its home. Optionally, you may also want to set another environment variable KNOTPLOT_INSTITUTION so that comment lines in Postscript files and other files will contain information about where they were created, for example setenv KNOTPLOT_INSTITUTION "Gumby's Graphics Lab" or whatever. The KnotPlot Manual ------------------- A hyper-text manual is located in the resource/www subdirectory. The manual contains numerous relative links to other files in the KnotPlot distribution, particularly files in the demos and special subdirectories. For this reason, care should be taken when moving the on-line manual relative to other files and directories in the distribution. More information and pictures are available at the KnotPlot Site http://www.cs.ubc.ca/nest/imager/contributions/scharein/KnotPlot.html or the author's home WWW page http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~scharein Updating KnotPlot ----------------- KnotPlot evolves fairly quickly, so you might want to reinstall it from time to time. The download page is located at http://www.pims.math.ca/knotplot/ To make sure that the program and the distribution of files that comes with KnotPlot are consistent, it's not a bad idea to reinstall both at the same time. Making sure things are readable ------------------------------- In order that others can use KnotPlot at your site, you want to make sure that all the files are readable (or executable). If you unpacked the distribution with the correct umask (see the download page), this will not be an issue. If not, then you might need to issue the following command from this directory (the KnotPlot Home): chmod -R ugo+rx * The -R option says to recursively descend the directory hierarchy. This command actually makes everything executable as well, which is not quite right, but shouldn't cause any problems. Note that this is the form of the chmod command to use under IRIX, other versions of UNIX may have a slightly different form. Enjoy KnotPlot! --------------- I hope you do, please contact me if you have any questions or suggestions for additions or changes. rob scharein.... 5 May 2000 Robert G. Scharein email: scharein@cs.ubc.ca Department of Computer Science phone: (604) 822-8572 (Office, rm 249) 2366 Main Mall - Room 201 (604) 822-2218 (Imager Lab) University of British Columbia FAX: (604) 822-5485 Vancouver, B.C. CANADA V6T 1Z4 WWW: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~scharein