SWI-Prolog for Windows Jan Wielemaker 06/05/94 The file pl-win.zip contains SWI-Prolog for Windows. It is a port of version 1.8.11 of SWI-Prolog. SWI-Prolog runs in a simple MS-Window providing traditional stream-based interaction. Status: ======= Beta test version. Please report problems to jan@swi.psy.uva.nl. Copyright: ========== SWI-Prolog may be distributed freely for non-commercial use. See pl\licence for a more complete description of your rights. Requirements: ============= 386/486/pentium based PC running MS-Windows 3.1. SWI-Prolog is compiled using the WATCOM 32-bit C/C++ compiler and should run on machines with and with or without floating point coprocessor. Minimum memory usage will be about 1 MB. You'll probably need at least 4 MB to run SWI-Prolog under Windows. Please report your experiences. Installation: ============= Unpack the zip file from C:, creating a directory c:\pl. If you want to install in another directory, define the environment variable SWIPL to point to the main direcotry. The executable is located in %SWIPL%/bin/pl.exe. It looks for %SWIPL%/startup/startup.pc for its startup file and the directory %SWIPL%/library for the Prolog library. Create a `New Program Object' using the Window Program Manager's `new...' option. The fields should be: Description: SWI-Prolog Command Line: c:\pl\bin\pl.exe Working Directory: The place you work Modify `Command Line' if you installed SWI-Prolog into another directory. Configuration of the console dimensions: ======================================== The stream-based console window is a completely separate library, using its own configuration info. It will look at two environment variables: "CONSOLE" and the base-name of the running program ("PL" if you use the default configuration). Options in "PL" overrule those in "CONSOLE". Options in "CONSOLE" apply to any application compiled using the console library. The options variable should contain a string of the form :{,:} Where is one of: default description sl 200 Number of lines you can scroll back. There is no limit, but the more you specify the more memory will be used. Memory is allocated when data becomes available. rows 24 Initial number of lines cols 80 Initial number of columns x CW_USEDEFAULT X-coordinate of the top-left corner. y CW_USEDEFAULT Y-coordinate of the top-left corner. You will normally specify this in your autoexec.bat file. Here is what I use: set CONSOLE=sl:600,x:400,y:400 Windowing and Graphics ====================== SWI-Prolog itself has no graphical capabilities. Graphics can be provided by the XPCE toolkit, for which an MS-Windows version is under development and will soon be available for public release. XPCE is *not* free software. The licence conditions neither the price for the Windows version is decided yet. Contact xpce-request@swi.psy.uva.nl if you are interrested. Filenames: ========== All filenames are internally handled in a Unix compatible format: they are lowercase, the directories are separated with a '/' and absolute files are of the form /:/... Filenames will be converted to DOS/Windows format just before invoking the C-library functions. Filename expansion will translate `~' to the environment variable HOME. Constructs of the form $VAR in filenames are expanded to the corresponding environment variable. DOS %VAR% is not recognised. The user may specify filenames either using DOS format or Unix format. Unix format should be used in source-files that need to be run both on the Unix and DOS/Windows version. Features and bugs specific to this version: =========================================== * Dynamically expanding runtime stacks using a stack-shifter. * Garbage collection works. * Fixed C-stack of 128 KB (limits depth of unification and various other recursive tasks; does not limit normal Prolog recursion). * GNU-Readline 1.2 based input editor that allows for GNU-EMACS like editing of the command line. This input editor runs on top of a simple, still incomplete I/O window. Features: * Command history using ^P, ^N * Cursor movement using ^B, ^F, etc. * Many more; just try the GNU-Emacs bindings! * End-of-file is ^D. * Completion on files and atoms using TAB, viewing alternatives using ESC-? * Window may be resized and scrolled. Bugs: * Showing matching bracket does not work * Resizing the window while the line is wrapped gives bad results. * save/[1,2] and save_program/[1,2] do not work. * profile/1 does not work. * load_foreign/[2,5] does not work. * The statistics/[0.2] reported CPU-time also includes idle time. * help/1 just dumps it output in the console window. Should be a separate window some day ... * Control-C cannot be used to break loops. * Fatal errors will often just cause the window to disappear. Boot compilation: ================= The file pl\startup\startup.pc is a `Prolog Intermediate Code' file created from the Prolog sources in the boot subdirectory. If you want to change anything there, you can recreate the startup file using the command: pl.exe -o startup/startup.pc -b boot/init.pl -c boot/load.pl Sources: ======== The common source for all platforms is available using anonymous ftp to swi.psy.uva.nl, directory pub/SWI-Prolog. The Windows version is compiled using the 32-bit WATCOM C/C++ compiler (version 9.5). If you decide to port it to another compiler (for example GCC), please forward me the changes.