       Xtal 3.7.2 for Win32 (MS Windows95/98  or MS Windows NT)

The Xtal System is Copyright (c) to the University of Western Australia.
 
It is currently distributed under the GNU general public license
as published by the Free Software Foundation, in the hope that it will be useful 
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

                       INSTALLATION

The single biggest hurdle with installing Xtal is setting the XTALHOME
environment variable correctly (typically in the xtal.bat file). It is
necessary to set this variable to the directory location of the xtal 
auxilliary files on your file system (xerror, symmap, cifmap files etc.)
i.e. add a command of the form:     set XTALHOME=f:\Xtal37\
(where the trailing slash on the path is essential!) 

There are actually several ways to achieve this. 
The first is to add the   set XTALHOME=...\     command in the xtal.bat file in \Xtal37\bin\
The second is to to add the   set XTALHOME=...\ command to your autoexec.bat file (for 95/98)
The third is to set the XTALHOME variable via the 
START/SETTINGS/CONTROL PANEL/SYSTEM\Environment menu       (for Windows NT)

The second and third options above may be preferable if you attempt to run Xtal 
from within windows (by double clicking a control file icon for example) rather than
explicitly from a windows based console terminal. 
As of the 3.7.2 you will also need to set the environment variables: 
set XTALTCLLIB=C:\Tcl\bin\tcl82.dll 
set XTALTKLIB=C:\Tcl\bin\tk82.dll 
It should also be possible to use any installed version of tcl/tk greater than 8.2 

Additionally if you would like to interface XTAL with the freeware POV-Ray(TM) via 
the PIG molecular graphics Xtal subprogram, you should iether modify the
search path to reference the POV-Ray for Windows v3.1\bin\ - and set the 
POVEXE variable to the executable name, i.e. SET POVEXE=pvengine.exe   
or set the executable name, full path explicitly in quotes.
SET POVEXE="C:\Program Files\POV-Ray for Windows v3.1\bin\pvengine.exe"



                             DOCUMENTATION

The manual for Xtal3.7 consists of over 200 pages of documentation in HTML format.
A PDF format manual also exists containing around 350 pages of documentation.
It should be downloaded separately.


                              TESTING


Xtal 3.7 can operate as a console based application. It reads from standard
input and writes to standard output. The xtal.bat file redirects these
IO streams to and from control and output files. 
Typically an xtal process is invoked by initiating a DOS CONSOLE from
within windows and typing at the command  prompt:

xtal  xtest0  

where "xtal"  references the xtal.bat script and "xtest0" is the
basename of the xtal control file "xtest0.dat" in the current working directory. 
Having said all that, the binary does respond directly to .dat files passed to
it on the command line, but you would need to set all the XTAL environment 
variables globally within the MS windows control panel menus.
This technique is essential for smooth operation with WinGX >= 1.64.05

All example .dat control files are located in the \Xtal37\tests\ direcory.
As a first test after unpacking Xtal3.7, in a console window, change directory
to the \Xtal37\tests\ directory and enter the command 
..\bin\xtal.bat xtest0 


Consult the Xtal manual pages for control file descriptions and contents.


For support and communications please visit the xtal website
http://xtal.sourceforge.net/

28/02/2003 
