COMMON UNIX MISTAKES/PROBLEMS: 

1) The programs must be run from a unix shell.

2) If you type a program name, e.g., vertex and get the message:
                        vertex: Command not found.
   you should modify the shell path to include the Perple_X directory, 
   or try typing ./vertex

3) If you type a program name, e.g., vertex and get the message:
                        vertex: Permission denied.
   you must assign execute permission to the program, e.g.
                        chmod 100 vertex
   assign more liberal permissions to allow other users to execute and/or
   copy the program (as in chmod 777 vertex).

4) See file conversion discussion below.

====================================================================================
 
                         DOS TO UNIX FILE CONVERSION PROBLEMS 

Because I work on a PC running a Windows operating system, users running UNIX/LINUX
or MAC operating systems often have difficulties using ASCII data/text files from
the Perple_X web site. The problem is that the DOS carraige return/line fee is 
translated into an extra character on UNIX/LINUX/MAC, often a "^M" character. These 
characters can be deleted with a text editor; alternatively use one of the UNIX commands:


                    perl -p -i -e 's/\r\n/\n/' file_name
or 
                    dos2unix -ascii from_file to_file
or 
                    dosunix from_file to_file
or
                    tr -d \15\32 < from_file  > to_file

File conversion may eliminate the final carraige return/line feed character in the
converted file and this may cause Perple_X or compiler problems. To correct this 
problem edit the file after conversion and add a blank line at the end of the file.

DOS/UNIX file conversion on Mac OSX can be also done with the Alpha editor (save file
in UNIX format) that can be downloaded from:

                     www.kelehers.org/alpha/

=====================================================================================

       VIEWING/EDITING POSTSCRIPT OUTPUT GENERATED BY PERPLE_X PLOTTING PROGRAMS

PSVDRAW, PSCONTOR and PSPTS generate Postscript files. These files can be opened and 
modified with the programs "idraw" or "drawtool" from the ivtools package available at:

                        www.ivtools.org/ivtools/index.html

Alternatively, postscript files can be converted to other graphic formats (e.g. .fig 
for xfig) with the program pstoedit.  If you just want to look at the plot, use 
"ghostview" or "gv" - or you convert the file with "ps2pdf" to a pdf file and open 
it with acroread (Acrobat Reader) or xpdf. 
====================================================================================

                                 COMPILE INSTRUCTIONS

1) Copy and decompress the zip archive:

            www.perplex.ethz.ch/perplex/ibm_and_mac_archives/Perp_sources.zip

2) Verify that the makefile has the correct compiler options for your system.


3) Type the command

                              make -f makefile <target>

   where target can be one or more of the programs you want compiled, e.g.,

       make -f makefile vertex frendly werami build mu_2_f psvdraw pspts pt2curv cohsrk species pscontor
 
   will make the most commonly used programs. There is a list of the common compiler 
   problems and compiler dependencies for the Perple_X programs at:

                       www.perplex.ethz.ch/perplex/sources/compile_lists.txt

   If you are unable to extract files from a Zip archive, or if you would like 
   executable versions of the sources for a specific machine (HP, SUN, SGI), 
   please do not hesitate to contact me.