*** 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