From: Brad Lucier
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 13:25:37 -0500 (EST)
To: faculty@MATH.Purdue.EDU
Subject: New programs/Change in program installation

Clarence Wilkerson has installed the latest versions of Maple and Adobe
Acrobat, and this marks a change in how programs will be installed on
our systems.  You should note the changes, because it will require you
to change your path to use the new programs (if you do want to use them).

In old-style Unix systems (like our SunOS systems---cantor, banach,
and most of the desktop machines) all locally installed programs
were put into /usr/local/bin (or at least a pointer to them was put
in /usr/local/bin).  This made it easier for users, since they needed
to have only /usr/local/bin in their path to access all programs.

As programs come with more supporting files and more programs
are installed, however, /usr/local/bin (and /usr/local/lib and
/usr/local/include) becomes more and more disorganized and difficult
to maintain.  (You can "ls /usr/local/bin" to see an example of this.)
To fix this, on newer systems (like our Solaris machines---peano and some
of the desktop machines--and Linux, HP, and IBM machines) each program
is installed like a package in its own directory.  This makes it easier
to install, update, and generally maintain packages,

To use programs installed in this way, you will need to add the
appropriate directories to your path.  In this new system, each package
will be installed in

/usr/local/package-name

on SunOS machines and

/opt/package-name

on Solaris machines.  To use the programs in this package, you will need

/usr/local/package-name/bin

on SunOS machines, and

/opt/package-name/bin

on Solaris machines in your path.  To access the man pages, you will need

/usr/local/package-name/man

on SunOS machines and

/opt/local/package-name/man

on Solaris machines in your MANPATH environment variable.

Specific Software:

Maple VR4 is a system for symbolic computation.  You will need

/usr/local/maple/bin (for SunOS) or /opt/maple/bin (for Solaris)

early in your path (before /usr/local/bin, since /usr/local/bin
contains the previous version of Maple (which will disappear soon)).

Adobe Acrobat consists of several programs.  acroread allows you to
read PDF files (generally they end in .pdf).  Say acroread "acroread
file.pdf".  distill converts postscript files to pdf files.  Say "distill
file.ps" to create file.pdf.  We don't really know what acroexch (Acrobat
Exchange) does.  There is a help file in Acrobat3/Exchange/acrguide.pdf
(with the right prefix for your machine) and there are other help files
around these directories (like tutor_ad.pdf, which we haven't read yet).
This is very useful for distributing documents on the web, since Adobe
Acrobat Reader is distributed for free.  NSF also suggests that grant
applications be submitted electronically in pdf format.

To use the Adobe Acrobat software, you will need

/usr/local/Acrobat3/bin (for SunOS) or /opt/Acrobat3/bin (for Solaris)

in your path.

If you don't know about paths or MANPATH or ..., then read an introductory
book on Unix, such as "Learning the Unix Operating System" or "Unix
for Dummies".

There are other new programs installed in /opt on Solaris machines.  The ones
marked with a * may be of general interest:

Acrobat3/		*	Adobe Acrobat Reader, Exchange, and Distiller
FSUNf90/		*	Fortran 90 compiler
Macaulay-1.ver.3/	*	Old-style Macaulay
Macaulay2-0.8.14/	*	New-style Macaulay
RealAudio/		*	programs for listening to broadcasts on the web
elm/			*	Mail organizing system
gap/			*	Various versions of a group-manipulation program
gap3r4p3/		*
gap3r4p4/		*
gwydion/			A Dylan programming system
java/				The Java Development Kit 1.1
latex2html-97.1/		A LaTeX to html converter (difficult to use)
local/			*	programs that didn't come as packages
lynx/				A non-graphical Web browser
magma/			*	A program to manipulate algebraic structures
maple/			*	A symbolic mathematics program
matlab/			*	Interactive computational linear algebra
mtools/				Tools to manipulate DOS floppies
netpbm/				Programs to manipulate images
nmh/				Mail organization tools
perl/				The Perl programming language
pgp/				Tools for sending encrypted/signed e-mail
ph/			*	Look up information in University phone book
pine/				e-mail manipulation
plt/				Scheme systems and tools
scsh/				The Scheme Shell
ssh/				System for safe (encrypted) network services
tcl/				The TCL language
teTeX/			***	Our standard TeX system.

(teTeX is an exception to the above rules for bin directories---on SunOS put

/usr/local/teTeX/bin/sparc-sunos4.1.3_U1

in your path, and on Solaris, put

/usr/local/teTeX/bin/sparc-solaris2.5.1

in your path.)

Brad Lucier