Floater is available!
Geoff Pike
Floater version a0 is now available! Use anonymous ftp to
helen.cs.berkeley.edu and look in the pub/pike directory.
Enclosed is the README file which includes detailed installation
instructions. Check the Floater web page for more information.
This is just a preliminary release; some features (such as team games)
aren't there yet, and quite a few things could be more polished. The
basics are there though.
I hope to see you at the table!
cheers,
Geoff Pike
pi...@cs.berkeley.edu
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Floater
(Version a0; April 22, 1996)
by Geoff Pike
pi...@cs.berkeley.edu
This is a preliminary release. Not all features are present; there are bugs.
Please read this file as well as the files called BUGS and CONFUSING.
Please check the Floater web page at http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/~pike/floater
for the most up to date information. Be prepared to install new
(prelimiary) versions once every few weeks until version 1.0 is ready.
Installation instructions:
--------------------------
Please read carefully. If you have never edited a Makefile before, you
will find this difficult.
If you have problems, please consult the web page to see if there are
notes from others who may have tried compiling Floater on your
architecture/OS. Send bugs to floate...@priam.cs.berkeley.edu, and
also please send descriptions of what you had to modify to get Floater
to work on your system. When sending email about problems that you
have not yet been able to solve, please clearly indicate what you have
tried so far.
Almost all of the difficult-to-port features of Floater are
implemented by using Tcl-DP, Tcl, and Tk, which have already been
ported to many different machines. Floater should run on a variety of
machines with no problem. It is known to compile on Suns (SunOS 4.1),
HPs (HP/UX), and Silicon Graphics (IRIX). Don't be intimidated by the
amount of software you may need to install---the autoconf scripts
really work and next to nothing needs to be fixed by hand.
Floater has two versions---textual and graphical. Both require Tcl
7.3 and Tcl-DP 3.2, which are freely available---see below. In
addition, the graphical version requires Tk 3.6 and the text version
requires System V style curses or ncurses (GNU's free replacement for
curses). Note that the stated version numbers are required. When a
stable version of Tcl-DP that works with a more recent release of
Tcl/Tk becomes available, Floater will switch to that. Until then, we
are stuck with Tcl-DP 3.2 which requires Tcl 7.3 / Tk 3.6. One effect
of this is that the textual and graphical versions of Floater must be
separate executables. This problem will be fixed by the next release
of Tcl-DP.
BSD users without ncurses should have it installed anyway, as the
maintainer of BSD curses has publically announced that he is no longer
supporting it and he encourages people to switch to ncurses. If you
are unsure whether you need ncurses to use Floater, try it first
without ncurses. You may get ncurses by anonymous ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu
in the /pub/gnu directory.
Detailed instructions follow.
0. Floater more or less requires UNIX and 32-bit integers. Brave
souls who try to install it without those things may succeed but with
some difficulty.
1. If your site doesn't have it, install Tcl 7.3, available by
anonymous ftp from ftp.smli.com in the directory /pub/tcl. If you
want to be able to use the graphical user interface, you will also
need to install Tk 3.6, available from the same place.
2. If you want to be able to use the textual user interface, you may
or may not need ncurses. System V users and many BSD users should
either not need it or already have it. See above.
3. Get Tcl-DP 3.2 by anonymous ftp from mm-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in the
/pub/Tcl-DP directory. Uncompress the tar file (either
tcl-dp3.2.tar.Z or tcl-dp3.2.tar.gz). Then do:
tar xvf tcl-dp3.2.tar
This will create a directory call tcl-dp3.2 that contains source code
for dpwish, dpsh and other good stuff. Floater is a modified version
of dpwish; Floatert (the text version of Floater) is a modified
version of dpsh. Before doing anything in the tcl-dp3.2 directory, we
are going to overwrite parts of it. (This installation procedure does
not install a working version of Tcl-DP 3.2 on your system. You may
do that separately, if you wish.)
4. Get the compressed Floater tar file by anonymous ftp from
helen.cs.berkeley.edu in the /pub/pike directory, or from the Floater
web page. Uncompress the tar file. Put it in the tcl-dp3.2 directory
that was created in step 3. Then, in that directory, do:
chmod +w *
chmod +w dplite/*
tar xvf floater*.tar
Now, if you wish to install the GUI/Tk/X windows version of Floater:
5. Run the configure script by doing:
./configure
This creates a Makefile.
6. Do "make". It probably won't work. If not, edit the file
Makefile.in to try to set up the paths for various libraries, etc., as
necessary. More instructions are in that file. Each time you edit
Makefile.in, do "make Makefile" to regenerate the Makefile, and then
do (just) "make" again. (Actually, on some systems you can just do
"make" and it will automatically recreate the Makefile and then try to
recompile.)
7. (Optional) Do "make install" to put the program and its
associated data (.tcl files in this case) into standard locations
(e.g. /usr/local). If you don't do "make install," then users may
need to set the environment variables DP_LIBRARY and FLOATER_LIBRARY
to (whatever)/tcl-dp3.2/library and (whatever)/tcl-dp3.2/tclcode,
respectively, unless you have cleverly set these things up already (in
the Makefile or Makefile.in).
To install the text version of Floater follow steps 5 through 7, but
in the directory .../tcl-dp3.2/dplite rather than .../tcl-dp3.2.
In general, you should try to compile both versions of the program.
The executables will be called floater and floatert.
The -g flag to the C compiler was left on so that in the event of a
crash, particularly helpful people might decide to get a stack trace
from the core dump and email it to floate...@priam.cs.berkeley.edu.
You may wish to change the compilation flags (e.g. get rid of -g and
put in -O) and/or strip the executable.
Ron Natalie
: Floater version a0 is now available! Use anonymous ftp to
: helen.cs.berkeley.edu and look in the pub/pike directory.
I suppose it would be out of the question to tell us what this
package is before we have to download it?
gr...@neosoft.com
>Floater version a0 is now available!
[ 167 lines of README installation and compilation instructions removed ]
wow, i'll bet that took some doing. 150+ lines of detailed technical
instructions without a clue as to what the package is or does.
- greg
Angelo DePalma
: Floater version a0 is now available! Use anonymous ftp to
: helen.cs.berkeley.edu and look in the pub/pike directory.
: Enclosed is the README file which includes detailed installation
: instructions. Check the Floater web page for more information.
Am I a nincompoop, or do you mention, somewhere -- anywhere -- in your
post what a "floater" is? Or both?
I've heard the term "floater" before, but not having anything to do with
bridge. "Floater," in real life, usually means unwanted body
effluents (snots, etc.) which either dangle from an area close to their
source or are discovered suspended, either by gravity or the viscosity of
a supporting fluid, away from their source. E.g., let's say you sneeze
and a bit of schnatz falls into your friend's milk and remains there.
THAT is a floater. Or, let's say, some extraneous mucus attaches too and
is found dangling from the sleeve of a sweater or jacket. THAT is also a
floater.
Thanks for your attention.
Angelo
Trey Palmer
Angelo DePalma <a...@crystal.palace.net> wrote:
>
>Am I a nincompoop, or do you mention, somewhere -- anywhere -- in your
>post what a "floater" is? Or both?
>
[ Vile, disgusting paragraph deleted ]
On a much more pleasant note, I normally use the term to designate
a glass full of ice floating in a pitcher of beer to keep it cold
while my friends and I linger over it on a pleasant spring day such
as this.
I like this definition much better, how about y'all?
- Trey
--
Trey Palmer Ramblin Reck from Georgia Tech Atlanta, GA
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All the boys are monsters, all the girls are whores; so if you lose
the one you love, there's always plenty more. - Squirrel Nut Zippers