There has been a number of questions as regarding installing Perl and GNU E-macs on the Windows machines in the Psychology Dept. here at UNC. Here's a quick and easy tutorial on how to do-it-yourself.

The advantages of using Perl are straightforward - it's easy to use, processes text and data really well, and resembles popular programming languages such as C. It's main disadvantage is that it requires a Perl interpreter. Luckily, ActiveState maintains a Perl interpreter for Windows that's free. But the ActiveState Perl distribution does not have an easy way to view and edit Perl scripts with ease. So, I recommend using the GNU Emacs for Windows, which will color-code Perl scripts and provides many other helpful features.

So first, you want to install ActiveState Perl. Then you want to install GNU E-macs.

Installing ActiveState Perl

1. First, you have to install a program called "Windows Installer". Depending on what version of Windows your running, you need to install either this if you are running Windows NT or this if you are running Windows 95, 98 or ME. If you are running Windows 2000 or XP you can skip this step. Remember to run the instmsi.exe to install it.



2. Download ActiveState Perl to your machine. You can either download the latest distribution from the ActiveState web-site yourself by clicking here or go to ActiveState's main home page http://www.activestate.com or just click here to download the 630 Windows Build. Remember to go to ActiveState's page and sign up for the mailing list, give them your info, and so on. (Note that some scripts, such as MultiMRC, do not run property on Build 630 for reasons unknown).



3. Go to wherever you downloaded ActivePerl .MSI file, and again just click on it to install it.



4. Now you have to install the graphics program "Tk" to get it to run any programs that use graphics. For this to work, you must be connected to the Internet. To install it, you have to open a DOS Command Prompt (Under the Start Menu, the Programs folder). Then go to the directory you installed Perl in. Go to the /bin directory beneath that installation. Type ppm at the command prompt. Then type install Tk and Tk will install itself over the net onto your machine. Below illustrates the process.
   
   D:\Perl\bin>ppm
   PPM interactive shell (2.0) - type 'help' for available commands.
   PPM> install Tk



5. Now Perl will run any perl script from a command prompt by typing perl myscript.pl where myscript is the name of your perl script. Also, it should associated Perl scripts with itself and allow them to run from Windows Explorer by clicking on them. Perl Scripts will be highlighted by a yellow sphere icon in Windows. Remember that a Perl script must end with a .pl to be recognized under Windows Explorer as a Perl script.

1. Download GNU Emacs in its zipped (compressed) form to some directory by clicking here.i



2. Copy the emacs-20.zip file to a temporary folder on your machine



3. Unzip the contents of emacs-20 zip archive into C:\Program Files'. This will create an emacs-20 folder underneath Program Files.



4. Open a DOS command prompt window (from the Start menu, listed under Programs).



5. Type in the command:
   
   C:\Progra~1\emacs-20\bin\addpm C:\Progra~1\emacs-20
   
   This initializes some system parameters in Windows' registry to let Emacs know where to find the Emacs installation.



6. Emacs can now be called from the Start Menu. It is located under the entry GNU Emacs.


-web-page by Harry Halpin
For any more questions, please e-mail hhalpin@email.unc.edu