Installation and Setup

The distributions are available from the wrcad.com web site, along with the distributions for Linux and OS X. The distributions come in self-extracting .exe files. Simply run the files to do the installation. The programs can later be uninstalled, either from the Control Panel or by clicking the Uninstall icons in the XicTools program group in the Start menu.

The same process can be used to install updated releases - it is not necessary to uninstall first. A more convenient way to keep current is to use the updating feature of the help system (see 6.1.1).

WARNING
The programs use an entry in the Windows Registry to find their startup files, etc. This entry is created by the installer program. Thus

1. The correct way to move an existing installation to another location is to uninstall the program, and reinstall to the new location using the standard distribution file. If you just move the files to a new location, the Registry won't be updated and the program won't run correctly.

2. You can not simply copy files from another machine when creating a new installation. The files must be installed through the distribution files, or the Registry entry won't be set.

The Registry entry used (by the inno installer program) is (for example)

HKLM \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall \ Xic-4is1

The Windows regedit utility can be used to repair the Registry if necessary. The Windows reg utility can also be used to query and modify the Registry from the command line.

The programs are installed by default under C: \ usr \ local, which can be specified to the program installer. The installation directories will be created if necessary. All of the programs will install under a directory named ``xictools'' under the prefix, (for example, Xic files would be installed by default in C: \ usr \ local \ xictools \ xic). The structure of the tree is exactly that as under Linux, which simplifies compatibility. It is recommended that the default installation location be used, if possible.

The Generation 4 programs all use the GTK-2 toolkit for the user interface. The DLLs and other support files for this toolkit are in the gtk2-bundle distribution file. This must be installed, by executing the file, in the same manner as the program distribution files. You will only need to do this once, or at least very infrequently. The default location is under C: \ usr \ local \ gtk2-bundle.

By default, the actual binary executable is run from a script (.bat) file, which is installed in the same directory as the executables, which by default is C: \ usr \ local \ xictools \ bin. The script takes care of properly specifying the path to the DLLs provided by the gtk2-bundle.

A program group named XicTools is created in the Start menu (or equivalent), from which the programs can be started. The programs can also be started from a command line, in either a Windows Command Prompt window or a Cygwin shell window. One will need to type the full path to the bat file (e.g., type ``C: \ usr \ local \ xictools \ bin \ xic'' to start Xic). There are two ways to avoid having to type the whole path:

1. Add the directory to your search path. This is the PATH variable in the environment. This can be set in your Command Promptwindow by giving a command like

   PATH=%PATH%;c: \ usr \ local \ xictools \ bin

   or the PATH can be set from the Control Panel (the procedure is described below for Windows 8).

2. The bat files can be copied from the installation location into a directory that is already in the search path, or to the current directory.

WARNING
In early alpha test releases, it was suggested that the gtk2-bundle/bin be added to the system PATH. This is a very bad idea, since this may have an adverse effect on other programs. Unless you really know what you are doing, the gtk2-bundle/bin directory should never appear in a global search path.