Subject: comp.soft-sys.ptolemy Frequently Asked Questions
Supersedes: <ptolemy-faq-1-807909510@eecs.berkeley.edu>
Date: 12 Sep 1995 19:11:04 GMT
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    The Ptolemy Frequently Asked Questions list   Last Updated: 12 Sep 1995
------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTENTS:

1.0 General Questions 
.1.1 What is Ptolemy?
.1.2 What are the hardware requirements?
.1.3 What are the software requirements?
.1.4 Demonstration Version (Ptiny Ptolemy)
.1.5 Current release
.1.6 Who was Ptolemy?

2.0 Getting Ptolemy
.2.1 Ptolemy FTP site
.2.2 Ptolemy WWW site 
.2.3 Getting a tape of Ptolemy
.2.4 Is Ptolemy available on CDROM?
.2.5 Documentation
.2.6 Technical Papers from the Ptolemy Group

3.0 Ptolemy Users Groups
        3.1 Ptolemy Mailing Lists
.3.2 Ptolemy Interest Mailing List
.3.3 Ptolemy Hackers Mailing List
.3.4 The Ptolemy User Account
.3.5 comp.soft-sys.ptolemy

4.0 Troubleshooting Ptolemy


--
1.0  GENERAL QUESTIONS 

1.1  What is Ptolemy?

The ambitious objectives of the Ptolemy project include most aspects
of designing signal processing and communications systems, ranging
from designing and simulating algorithms to synthesizing hardware and
software, parallelizing algorithms, and prototyping real-time systems.

The Ptolemy software is a system-level design framework that allows
mixing models of computation. In designing digital signal processing
and communications systems, often the best available design tools are
domain specific. The tools must be able to interact. Ptolemy allows
the interaction of diverse models of computation by using the
object-oriented principles of polymorphism and information hiding.
For example, using Ptolemy, a high-level dataflow model of a signal
processing system can be connected to a hardware simulator that in
turn may be connected to a discrete-event model of a communication
network.

Since the Ptolemy project began in 1990, numerous advances in design,
simulation, and code generation have occurred. Recent enhancements of
the Ptolemy project have been in the realms of dataflow modeling of
algorithms, synthesis of embedded software from such dataflow models,
animation and visualization, multidimensional signal processing,
managing complexity by means of higher-order functions,
hardware/software partitioning, and VHDL code generation.  In 1993,
the Ptolemy project joined the Advanced Research Projects Agencies
(ARPA) RASSP project as a technology base developer.

Ptolemy has been used for a broad range of applications including
signal processing, telecommunications, parallel processing, wireless
communications, network design, radio astronomy, real time systems,
and hardware/software co-design.  Ptolemy has also been used as a
laboratory for signal processing and communications courses.
Currently Ptolemy has hundreds of users in hundreds of sites, in
industry, academia, and government.

1.2  What are the hardware requirements?

Summary of architectures and 0.5.2 
ARCH.OS Release.Notes
----.----------.-----

Our four main platforms that we provide binaries for:
sun4.SunOS4.1.3.Used in house at UCB
sol2.Solaris2.4.Used in house at UCB
hppa.HP-UX9.05.Used by other groups at UCB
irix5.IRIX5.2..Used very little at UCB, Irix5.2 binaries available

Two platforms we build on, but don't provide binaries:
sol2.cfront  Solaris2.4.Built in house at UCB, Used very little
hppa.cfront  HP-UX9.05.Built in house at UCB, Used very little

Active ports by others that we are folding fixes in from and do
provide binaries for:
linux.???..Binaries at pub/ptolemy/contrib/linux
alpha.OSF1/3.x.New port, has alignment problems in vem
aix.AIX3.2.5.New port, powerPC binaries only. For other aix
... binaries see ftp://sctf.thomson-csf.fr..
... (We hope to have more aix binaries locally soon)

Active ports by others that we are folding fixes in from, but we don't
provide binaries:

aix.xlc.AIX3.2.5.New port, uses IBM xlc and xlC compilers, has many bugs
nbsd.386     NetBSD.New port, might not compile out of the box
irix5.cfront Irix5.3.Very new port


Discontinued ports that once worked, but we've stopped trying to compile:
mips.DEC Ultrix4.x.Discontinued in 0.5.2
cfront.SunOS4.1.3.Sun CC1.x(?) Discontinued in 0.5.2


Installing the full system requires 110 Mbytes for Ptolemy (more if you
optionally remake).  The demonstration version of Ptolemy, Ptiny
Ptolemy, only requires 12 Mbytes of disk space.  Ptolemy requires at
least 8 Mbytes of physical memory.

1.3  What are the software requirements?

Ptolemy requires the X window system.  Ptolemy relies on a subset of
the GNU tools, such as GNU make and gcc/lib++.  The binaries for the
GNU tools on some architectures are supplied as a separate compressed
tar file.  Ptolemy also requires Tcl/Tk (versions 7.3/3.6) which is
included in the primary Ptolemy distribution.

1.4  Demonstration Version (Ptiny Ptolemy)

The demonstration version of Ptolemy, known as Ptiny Ptolemy, is a
subset of Ptolemy designed to give users a sample of the power and
flexibility of Ptolemy without taking up quite so much disk space.
Ptiny Ptolemy is also meant for the classroom as all of the Ptolemy
laboratory exercises may be performed with Ptiny Ptolemy alone.

Ptiny Ptolemy runs on the Sun 4, HP-PA, and DECStation (MIPS)
workstations.  You will need 12 Mbytes of disk space to install it.

The demonstration version of Ptolemy is available via FTP in the
ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu FTP site in the pub/ptolemy/ptiny0.5
directory.  More information on the Ptolemy FTP site is in the GETTING
PTOLEMY section.  Ptiny Ptolemy is not available on tape at this time.

Joe Buck has created a linux only version of Ptiny 0.5.2, available on
the Ptolemy ftp site as
pub/ptolemy/contrib/linux/pt-0.5.2tiny-linux.tar.gz.


1.5  Current release

The current release of Ptolemy is version 0.5.2.  This is an update to
the fifth major release of Ptolemy.  The zero out in front is to
remind users that this is University software and not a commercial
product.  Patches to the current release are found in the Ptolemy FTP
site.  The source and binaries on the ftp site have had the first
0.5.2 patch applied, bringing the version number up to 0.5.2p1.  There
is a second set of patches, 0.5.2p2, but we have not yet made binaries
available at this patch level.

1.6  Who was Ptolemy?

Claudius Ptolemaus (Ptolemy to his friends) fl A.D. 127-151, was an
Hellenistic mathematician, astronomer, and geographer in Alexandria.
He's most famous for his model of the Universe with the Earth at the
center and heavenly bodies moving about it.  The planets moved on
circles (attached to circles) attached to the circles of their orbits.
Although ungainly, his model was able to accurately account for the
movements across the sky of both the stars and planets.


2.0  GETTING PTOLEMY

2.1  Ptolemy FTP site

The Ptolemy FTP site is: ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu

This site contains the latest release of Ptolemy, patches to the
current release, a postscript version of the Ptolemy manual, the
demonstration version of Ptolemy, selected Ptolemy papers and journal
articles, as well as the log files for the mailing list.

For those unfamiliar with anonymous ftp, here's what you do:
FTP to Internet host "ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu"  (128.32.240.78)
Login as "anonymous"; use your full email address as the password
.cd pub
get the README file and follow its instructions.

There is an FTP mirror in Japan: ftp.iij.ad.jp 
This site is a mirror of the Berkeley site.  Ptolemy is in the
pub/misc/ptolemy directory.

There is a WWW mirror of in France at
ftp://sctf.thomson-csf.fr/pub/ptolemy/www/Ptolemy.html.

2.2  Ptolemy WWW site

There is a World Wide Web (WWW) page for Ptolemy:
.http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/
The Ptolemy WWW page contains information about Ptolemy,
demonstrations of Ptolemy programs, and access to the Ptolemy FTP
site, and a hypertext version of the Users's Manual and the Kernel
Manual.


2.3  Getting a tape of Ptolemy

Organizations without Internet FTP capability can obtain Ptolemy
without support from ILP:

        EECS/ERL Industrial Liaison Program Office
        Software Distribution
        205 Cory Hall
        University of California, Berkeley
        Berkeley, CA 94720
        (510) 643-6687
        email: ilpsoftware@eecs.berkeley.edu

This includes printed documentation, including installation
instructions, a user's guide, and manual pages.  A handling fee (on
the order of $250) will be charged.

2.4 Is Ptolemy available on CDROM?

Prime Time Freeware has in the past had Ptolemy available via CDROM.
As of 5/95, the latest issue (Prime Time Freeware for UNIX, Issue 4-1)
contains Ptolemy0.5.1

Prime Time Freeware can be reached at:
.Prime Time Freeware
.370 Altair Way, Suite 150
.Sunnyvale, CA  94086
.(408) 433-9662, (408) 433-0727 FAX, ptf@cfcl.com
.http://www.ptf.com/ptf

2.5  Documentation

The Ptolemy Manual (The Almagest) is split into four volumes: 
User's Manual, Star Atlas (a guide to each of the blocks),
Programmer's Manual, and Kernel Manual.  The new user will only need
the User's Manual to get started.

All four volumes are available in postscript format from the Ptolemy
FTP site.  The Users's Manual and Kernel Manual are available as html
pages via the Ptolemy home page.  In addition, bound hard copies of
each of the volumes are available from the ILP Software Distribution
Office (see above for address).  Current price is $20 per volume, but
this is subject to change.

2.6  Technical Papers from the Ptolemy Group 

A number of Ptolemy related papers and journal articles are available
in the ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu FTP site in the pub/ptolemy/papers
directory and also via the Ptolemy WWW homepage
(http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu).  From the Ptolemy homepage, one
can search the publications by keyword. Some of the papers are in the
postscript format, and require a postscript printer or viewer.  Other
papers are in HTML format.  The paper "overview" gives an overview of
Ptolemy and would be of particular interest to new users.


3.0  PTOLEMY USERS GROUPS

3.1  Ptolemy Mailing lists 

The Ptolemy mailing lists are run by the Majordomo mailing list 
server.  This server can automatically subscribe you to mailing
lists and it can send you monthly archive files for each of the
lists.  To find out more about our Majordomo sever, send an email
letter to: majordomo@ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu with the word "help"
in the body of the letter.

3.2 Ptolemy Interest Mailing list

This moderated mailing list is for Ptolemy announcements only. Thus,
you cannot post to this group.  The amount of mail here is kept very
light (a few messages a year).

To subscribe to the ptolemy-interest mailing list, send mail to:
ptolemy-interest-request@ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu with the word
"subscribe" in the body (not the subject) of the letter.

All mail to ptolemy-interest also goes to ptolemy-hackers, so if you
subscribe to ptolemy-hackers, there is no need to subscribe to
ptolemy-interest too.

3.3  Ptolemy Hackers Mailing list

This is a discussion list for Ptolemy questions, bug reports, and to
share Ptolemy additions and applications.  Since this is a discussion
group, mail volume can sometimes be heavy.  All mail sent to Ptolemy-
hackers is automatically cross posted to the comp.soft-sys.ptolemy
newsgroup.

To subscribe to the ptolemy-hackers mailing list, send mail to:
ptolemy-hackers-request@ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu with the word 
"subscribe" in the body of the letter.  To leave the newsgroup put
the word "unsubscribe" in the body of your message.

3.4  The Ptolemy Users Account

Ptolemy is distributed without support or warranty.  However, if you
really need to contact a human being with a Ptolemy question, you can
send email to: ptolemy@eecs.berkeley.edu.

For the latest information about Ptolemy: 
finger ptolemy@eecs.berkeley.edu

3.5  comp.soft-sys.ptolemy

Just like the ptolemy-hackers mailing list, the comp.soft-sys.ptolemy
newsgroup is a forum of the discussion of Ptolemy questions, bug
reports, additions, and applications.  Note that all mail sent to the
ptolemy-hackers mailing list is automatically posted to the
comp.soft-sys.ptolemy newsgroup as well.

The name is chosen to correspond to similar newsgroups for the Khoros
and Matlab systems, which are also under comp.soft-sys.

4.0  TROUBLESHOOTING PTOLEMY

There is a troubleshooting file available via anonymous ftp from the
Ptolemy FTP site, ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu in the directory
pub/ptolemy/ptolemy0.5.2/TROUBLE_SHOOTING_0.5.2.  The troubleshooting
guide is also available in html format via the ptolemy home page

The troubleshooting guide contains the following:
.
A.5  Troubleshooting
A.5.1  pigi fails to start when put in the background
A.5.2  pigi fails to start with a message about not finding fonts
A.5.3  Ptolemy startup window only has an ok button
A.5.4  pxgraph fails to come up or displays a blank window
A.5.5  Old flowgraphs do not work (facets are inconsistent)
A.5.6  Error: ld.so: libXext.so.4: not found
A.5.7  Problems starting up clients such as xedit under 
A.5.8  Problems with the colormap
A.5.9  Ptolemy simulation runs do not stop
A.5.10  Problems with the compiler itself
A.5.11  Problems Compiling files
A.5.12  Generated code in CGC fails to compile
A.5.13  Ptolemy will not recompile
A.5.14  Can't find genStarList or genStarTable during 
A.5.15  Only a few stars are present (make must be called make, 
A.5.16  "tcl.h: No such file or directory" while linking pigiRpc
A.5.17  Missing symbols while linking pigiRpc
A.5.18  Error involving xedit
A.5.19  Emacs confuses .pl files with Prolog
A.5.20  The window manager crashes
A.5.21  Path and/or Environment Variables not set in "debug" pigi
A.5.22  CGC demos won't run
A.5.23  EOF messages while using tar on Suns
A.5.24  Dynamic Linking fails
A.5.25  Dynamic Linking and makefiles
A.5.26  The DE stars "And" and "Or" no longer work
A.5.27  Multi-porthole Galaxies Fail
A.5.28  Problems with Mac X and Ptolemy
A.5.29  Postscript error while printing Ptolemy manual files
A.5.30  Messages about `unexpected end of line seen while 
A.5.31  pigi Requires some networking support
A.5.32  Can I use my own version of tcl/tk?
A.6  Known Bugs
A.6.1  Bugs in Vem
A.6.2  Bugs in pigi
A.6.3  Code Generation Bugs
A.6.4  Bugs in pxgraph
A.6.5  HPPA specific bugs
A.6.6  IBM AIX specific bugs
A.6.7  Silicon Graphics IRIX5 specific bugs
A.6.8  Linux specific bugs
A.6.9  Sun Solaris2.4 specific bugs
A.6.10  Sun OS4 specific bugs
A.6.11  DEC Alpha specific bugs
A.6.12  GNU compiler bugs
A.7  Additional Resources
