                           (XM)GRACE for XFree86 OS/2
                                   (19990319)


                          Contents of this document:

                              1) Introduction
                              2) How to build xmgrace
                              3) How to install



1) Introduction
   ------------

  Like every software this port of GRACE for XFree86 OS/2 may still have
  some bugs. Some of them are just related to the general problems
  un*x biased applications have on non-un*x filesystems. So read the
  documentation and FAQs of XFree86 carefully to get some hints how to
  avoid running into these bugs ('limitations'). e.g. a good idea is
  installing TVFS, the Toronto Virtual File System.

  A pre-compiled version should always be available from

    http://www.tu-darmstadt.de/~st002279/os2.html


  This document describes only the OS/2 specifics. If you're going
  to use GRACE you should read the general documentation files as well !


2) How to build xmgrace
   --------------------
   
  Here I try to give a complete list what you need to build grace.
  The first listed packages have be installed anyway:

  - EMX 0.9 development package
    (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu  and/or http://www.leo.org)

  - XFree86 for OS/2 ("X/2"), including its development package
    (http://borneo.gmd.de/~veit/os2/xf86os2.html)

  - Lesstif for X/2
    (http://borneo.gmd.de/~veit/os2/xf86os2.html)

  Additional useful utilities:

  - the "usual" GNU utilities (text, shell, file).
  - un*x shell (sh)

  To actually build grace I used additional libraries which may or
  may not be public available in binary form (grace _can_ be build
  without these packages). Well, at least they could be found in
  binary distributions from the URL given above.

    - libhelp and it's little application xmhelp
      (used to display the online help written in HTML)
      Their sources can be found at:
         ftp://ftp.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/libhelp/
    - libgd: processing GIF files
         http://www.boutell.com
    - pdflib: creating PDF files
         http://www.ifconnection.de/~tm/
    - fftw library: fourier transformations
         http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~fftw/

  So far the supplied configure (shell-) script may not work under OS/2
  (even using the existing Autoconf port). 
  As a small replacement I offer a small REXX-script 'configos2.cmd' which will

    - copy the standard OS/2 configuration files (config.h and Make.conf)
      from .\arch\os2 to the toplevel source directory
    - build dlfcn.a in \arch\os2 (support for user-supplied mathemtical
      functions in dynamic load libraries)

  configos2.cmd is located in .\arch\os2 and has to be copied
  to the toplevel source directory before executing it.
  Please check .\arch\os2\config.h.os2 and .\arch\os2\Make.conf.os2
  whether they suit your system and modify them if necessary.

  Finally 'x11make.exe' will be called. Note that calling the 'make'
  script from X/2 won't work cause the generic Makefile is using
  shell commands which is suppressed by make.cmd.


3) How to install
   ---------------

  At this moment the OS/2 Makefiles don't offer an installation target.
  You have to it manually ...

  The binary distribution archive can just be unpacked and will
  extract in $(X11ROOT)\. I supply a small REXX-script 'xmgrace1.cmd'
  which will set the necessary environment variable(s) so that xmgrace
  can be run within this setup.
  
  In future I plan to include some instructions how to access your installed
  printers without manual processing the Postscript files. But this is
  of course not only a problem of GRACE but of every non-PM application
  on OS/2. By now I'm using lpr and lpd to access my local Postscript printer.
  Check out the printing tools on LEO/Hobbes for useful utiities.
  Of course you may 'just' print to a file and do the further processing
  of this file manually.
  


Alexander Mai
st002279@hrzpub.tu-darmstadt.de
