Koen De Hondt
Last revision: August 7th, 1996

Agora94 User Guide - Before you begin

This chapter describes the requirements of the system that must be met in order to successfully install and use the Agora system.

Software requirements

The Agora system described in this document is implemented in VisualWorks 1.0. It will not run in ObjectWorks\Smalltalk without VisualWorks !

For the implementation of the symbiosis between Agora and Smalltalk, some methods are added to Smalltalk system classes, but no standard methods are changed.

Hardware requirements

The Agora system requires a grayscale monitor to display its user interface components correctly. Since the Agora system consists of about 250 Smalltalk classes and since the current version consumes a lot of memory to execute programs, a minimum partition of 8 MB of internal memory for the Smalltalk application is recommended.

If you encounter memory problems like "emergency no space left", try quitting Smalltalk and enlarging the memory partition used by the Smalltalk virtual machine. The implementors have put great emphasis on a clean design, rather than on an efficient implementation. As a consequence the user may perceive the Agora system to be slow. This is especially apparent on small computers like small Macintoshes.

Configuration of the files

The structure of the agora94 directory on PROG'S FTP-site is as follows: 
	agora94			root directory
		readme		contains last minute changes and update information
		bugsandfixes	reported bugs and fixes
		agora.st	main file for filing in the system
		file outs	directory of Agora file outs
		examples	directory of examples
			agora1	directory of examples taken from [1]
			manual	directory of examples taken from this document
		agora1.ps	[1]
		agora2.ps	[2]
		manual.ps	this document