Contents of paper-tape/WINDOWS.txt
The Paper Tape Project - Using Windows
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Most work at the paper tape project was performed on Unix operating
systems (like Linux). With their powerful shells its quite easy
to perform various operations like transforming ASCII hex code files
to binary files, truncate or add null bytes, generate bit musters
(e.g. as paper tape labels or for testing purposes) and read in
or punch out, because you can concate simply every program with
every else - following the Unix philosophy:
* Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
* Write programs to work together.
* Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a
universal interface
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy)
Microsoft Windows doesn't follow this philosophy, and therefore
it's not comfortable at all while working in the Paper Tape Project.
On the other hand, I was requested to program a punching GUI for
Microsoft Windows. Therefore I have programed a M$ Windows parallel
port driver and a GTK graphical user interface.
To compile these things on Windows, I use MinGW and MSYS, as well
as the precompiled GTK+ libraries and header files for Windows.
This documentation shall give a small overview how to setup an
environment. Programing has been tested at Windows 2000 and
Windows XP. Generally, the old Win 9x tree is no more supported.
Setting up the Windows Environment
----------------------------------
You need to install, in order:
1. MinGW. The most simple is the Automated MinGW Installer. See
http://www.mingw.org
2. MSYS, if you want.
3. The latest version of GTK+ (2.10.0 or newer)
Sven Köppel, $Id$
