
!!! This document is outdated
!!! See file HOWTOS/GNU-APL-Windows-11.html instead.

You can run GNU APL on windows by means of CYGWIN:

1. install CYGWIN (see http://www.cygwin.org)

2. Install additional libraries as needed (look for error messages in 3. below)

3. Follow the standard installation procedure for GNU APL in INSTALL,
  README-2-configure, and README-3-keyboard.

WARNING: If you are not familiar with CYGWIN (which provides a GNU/Linux look
         and feel on WINDOWS) then your health is at risk! You may suffer
         serious depressions after returning to WINDOWS. The only known cure
         is to permanently stay away from WINDOWs.

The procedure above has been tested with WINDOWS XP and a CYGWIN version
that has identified itself (via uname -a) as:

	CYGWIN_NT-5.1 Server 1.7.25(0.270/5/3) 2013-08-31 20:39 i686 Cygwin


LIMITATIONS: backtraces (Stack dumps after fatal errors) may not work
because they use a GNU extension that may or may not be supported on CYGWIN.

NOTE: The procedure described in README-3-keyboard uses the program xmodmap,
which only works when xmodmap and GNU APL are started under X (which is
normally the case for Desktop GNU/Linux distributions). In CYGWIN you can
start a "Cygwin Terminal" which does NOT run under X. If you run xmodmap
in the Cygwin Terminal then it complains like this:

 xmodmap: unable to open display ''

This is an indication that X is not running and that your keyboard will
not produce APL characters. You can still start GNU APL (to check that it
has compiled properly), but you will be lacking almost all functions.

A case where it makes sense to run GNU APL without X is APL scripts,
for example CGI scripts for web servers written in APL. These scripts do
not read input from the keyboard, so it does not matter that the keyboard
setup is wrong.

Another case is a remote login from machine A to machine B using ssh. In this
case X should run on machine A (so that the keyboard on A works), but GNU
APL on machine B can run without X.

Yet another possibility for Windows users is to install some GNU/Linux
distribution, for example Ubuntu or Linux Mint, in a virtual machine.
Installing virtual machines as well as installing GNU/Linux on a virtual
machine has become rather simple these days. Needless to say that the
WARNING above also applies in this case!

LATEST NEWS: GNU APL 1.8 no longer compiles under my CYGWIN version (for
Windows XP) and Windows XP seems not to be supported by CYGWIN anymore.
Therefore GNU APL 1.7 is the last version with WINDOWS support.

