        Virtual Instrumentation (VITESS)
	for pulsed and continuous sources


Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin fuer Materialien und Energie GmbH
former Hahn-Meitner-Institut Berlin

Modules:
	Klaus Lieutenant (klaus.lieutenant@helmholtz-berlin.de)
        Andreas Houben
	Geza Zsigmond    (geza.zsigmond@psi.ch)
	Sergey Manoshin
        Daniil Nekrassov (daniil.nekrassov@helmholtz-berlin.de)
	Dietmar Wechsler
	Friedrich Streffer

GUI Software:
	Michael Fromme   (fromme@helmholtz-berlin.de)


README

This program is a Tcl/Tk application. It has been developed on Unix and Windows, 
and runs fine on both operating systems.

Installation under Windows

This version came to you as a self extracting file, which has been produced with Inno Setup
(by Jordan Russell http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.htm).

You may compare the checksums of the downloaded vitess.exe install program with those stated
at the web site
https://www.helmholtz-berlin.de/vitess

The installation does not need administrator privileges, all files are installed under
one directory the installer has access to.

If you install the full version with Tcl/Tk + Gnuplot files included, double-clicking
the VITESS icon on your desktop should start the application.

If you install the minimal version, the desktop symbol might not link to your installed
Tcl software.

Let us assume you installed Tcl at C:\Programs\tcl and VITESS to C:\Programs\vitess.
Please change the program shortcut (link) on your desktop accordingly:
VITESS start command
  C:\Programs\tcl\bin\wish.exe -f Vitess
working directory
  C:\Programs\vitess

CAVEAT: 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Do not use folder names with blanks and other non-alphanumeric characters!  |
| DO NOT USE C:\Program Files\                                                |
| Pipes and commands will fail, because they assume command                   |
| parts to be separated by blanks.                                            |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

To uninstall VITESS you might use the uninstall item in the command (sub-) menu
(like START/VITESS/uninstall)
or the windows uninstall procedure for software
(START/settings/system/software or German 
 START/Einstellungen../Systemsteuerung/Software). 

Pipe Command Execution under Windows

If you save a pipe command and execute it as a batch file
in a MS-DOS shell window, you might observe problems with
temporary file sizes. Pipes in a MS-DOS shell are executed
strictly serialized, with intermediate files storing
command output. These intermediate files may be too big.
With Tcl/Tk piped commands are executed (quasi-)pararallel,
with small intermediate buffers in memory. 
Solution: 
1) start pipes from the VITESS GUI
2) Save the GUI setting with "save tcl" to a file e.g. C:\c.tcl
   Start a separate wish (C:\Programs\tcl\bin\tclsh.exe)
   and source C:\c.tcl there.

Gnuplot
VITESS uses gnuplot for plots of monitor modules if available.
The official binaray release comes with gnuplot binaries included.

If gnuplot is installed somewhere on drive C: or D:, VITESS will find and use it.
If you have problems with gnuplot, fetch a new versions elsewhere, install it,
and make it known to Vitess with the 'plot application' entry in the
Options/Helper application menu of the GUI.


Compilation from Sources
------------------------

VITESS comes with compiled binary images for all modules, compiled with
Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 under Windows 7, to be used with Windows 10, too.
The 32 bit binary images work fine on Windows 7 64 bit systems, too.
(Binaries compiled natively for 64 bit _might_ be more performant on
64 bit CPUs, but for some modules may have the opposite effect, and results
in bigger image files in any case.)

You may compile new own modules without touching old binaries,
and recompile everything with newer versions of Visual Studio. 

After installing Visual Studio, use the "Developer Command Prompt for VS 2017",
cd to the SRC directory in that window, and do
nmake /f vitess.mak all

At last you may copy the compiled files like
copy release\*.exe ..\MODULES
