Hi everyone,
I am a new Radiance user, currently a student at Penn State, currently trying to get Radiance up and running on my mac running os 10.3
I don't know exactly what to do in order to set the RAYPATH environment variable so that my system knows to look for the radiance files in /usr/local/bin
Could someone put together a beginner level unix user step by step list of how this is done. I can't wait to get this working! Thanks.
Ben Hagan
[email protected]
Hi everyone,
I am a new Radiance user, currently a student at Penn State, currently trying to get Radiance up and running on my mac running os 10.3
... at 3:48 AM? There are so many other things to do at that hour! (of course, I don't seem to be doing much better here).
I don't know exactly what to do in order to set the RAYPATH environment variable so that my system knows to look for the radiance files in /usr/local/bin
If you're using Panther, your default shell is bash. The way you add environment variables is to add them to your .bash_profile file. This is like the autoexec.bat on a windows system. Note the period (dot) prefix on the filename. The dot makes it a hidden file, which won't show up when you do a directory listing. To see if you already have one, you do "ls -a", which lists the hidden files too.
Anyway, from your home directory, type:
pico .bash_profile
You should now be in a text editor displaying the contents of your .bash_profile file, or a blank file if it didn't exist already. You want to add the following lines:
PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
RAYPATH=.:/usr/local/lib/ray
export PATH RAYPATH
What that does, line by line:
1) "make my PATH equal to /usr/local/bin, and whatever else was already in the PATH."
2) "make RAYPATH equal to the current directory (.) and /usr/local/lib/ray."
3) "save those requests; so that they exist every time I start a terminal session."
Could someone put together a beginner level unix user step by step list of how this is done. I can't wait to get this working! Thanks.
That's something I've been wanting to do for a while. For now, use this list as a resource, and you'll be up and running soon enough. Follow the steps above, and let us know if you still have problemos.
-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-
Rob Guglielmetti
[email protected]
On Nov 22, 2003, at 3:48 AM, Benjamin Hagan wrote:
Could someone put together a beginner level unix user step by step
list of how this is done. I can't wait to get this working! Thanks.
I have done this for installing Radiance on Cygwin under Windows 2K
& for Mandrake Linux. More because I wanted to remember how I got
them working, so once I did, I wrote out a little how-to.
And I don't know about OS X; but will be jumping ship to it within
next year (gonna buy my friend's used G4 when he gets his G5). But
one thing that's a pain when installing Radiance, and a major point
of my confusion when I first started using it, is that the command
'rview' is already used on some systems to call upon the VI editor,
rather than the Radiance command. Once you've got the raypath and
such set, type 'rview' and see what happens. If it opens Vi, or Vim,
then you've got to go in and remove the symbolic links named Rview
that are the cause of this behavor or set your pathing different,
otherwise you won't be able to use Radiance at all.
This was true in both the full install of Cygwin & Mandrake. So
since 10.3 also uses the Bash shell, it could be possible that
it's the same for 10.3 as well. Just a word of warning.
Also O'rilley has a wonderful 'Unix for Mac' kinda book, where
it teaches you how to use your Mac's command line. A large
part of using Radiance effectively is in understanding how
to use the Unix command line effectively, they go hand-in-hand,
so unless you already know a lot about it I'd recommend that
you get a book on it so you don't learn everything the hard
way like I did, and be a pest to others as I was. 
Jeffrey
Jeffrey McGrew wrote:
I have done this for installing Radiance on Cygwin under Windows 2K
& for Mandrake Linux. More because I wanted to remember how I got
them working, so once I did, I wrote out a little how-to.
Is this accessible online someplace?
And I don't know about OS X; but will be jumping ship to it within
next year (gonna buy my friend's used G4 when he gets his G5).
You will like it. Your friend will like his G5 even more, it seems.
But
one thing that's a pain when installing Radiance, and a major point
of my confusion when I first started using it, is that the command
'rview' is already used on some systems to call upon the VI editor,
rather than the Radiance command.
Ack! you're right, and I had meant to post something about that months ago when I (re)discovered that. I originally came across that problem way back in 1996, when I first installed & compiled Radiance on an old PII/266. I thought - get this - that something went wrong during the compile, and that was why vi was loading instead of rview, that somehow the compile process grabbed bits of vi's source when compiling Radiance. What the hell did (do) I know? It was but one of many false starts in my Radiance explorations.
This was true in both the full install of Cygwin & Mandrake. So
since 10.3 also uses the Bash shell, it could be possible that
it's the same for 10.3 as well. Just a word of warning.
It's got nothing to do with the shell, the problem is that if you blow off the default location and install the Radiance binaries someplace other than /usr/local/bin, even if you place your new location on the RAYPATH & PATH, it's likely to be lower in priority than the location of the symbolic link to vim that seems to be present on a LOT of the current Linux distros.
Kudos for pointing that out to the list, Jeffrey. I guess most people just accept the default location for the Radiance binaries so they never see this problem. Do a "locate rview" on your systems though; lots of you will probably see a link in /bin, linking rview to vi...
Greg, maybe a little warning could be added to the install script?
Is this accessible online someplace?
Uhm... no. Guess not. I thought I had posted it to this
Revit support site where I was talking about Radiance,
but I guess I didn't. Is there a good spot for me to
post it? I don't currently have one.
Ack! you're right, and I had meant to post something about that months
ago when I (re)discovered that.
It's a minor pain. The biggest problem I see with it isn't that
fact that rview is named the same as the alias used for Vim, it's
the fact that people, like me, install cygwin or linux specifically
for learning Radiance, run into this problem, and not understanding
anything about unix are instantly lost.
But then it's kinda like when my dad threw me into the deep end
to force me to learn to swim.
But this rview problem is there in Mandrake, and in Cygwin
too if you install Vim. For Mandrake, I simply removed the
alias with no problems, and for Cygwin I simply uninstalled
Vim, for I use Emacs.
It's got nothing to do with the shell, the problem is that if you blow
off the default location and install the Radiance binaries someplace
other than /usr/local/bin, even if you place your new location on the
RAYPATH & PATH, it's likely to be lower in priority than the location of
the symbolic link to vim that seems to be present on a LOT of the
current Linux distros.
Right. Didn't mean to imply that it was Bash, meant that since
they are now using Bash in 10.3, there are other things that they
are probably doing that are closer to linux distros. I don't remember
this rview problem happening on my wife's G4, which is running 10.2,
and where I put the files in the default location.
Kudos for pointing that out to the list, Jeffrey.
No problem. It was just my first big hurtle in learning radiance
and/or the *nix command line, so I thought I'd talk about it to
help others in my position.
Jeffrey
It's a minor pain. The biggest problem I see with it isn't that
fact that rview is named the same as the alias used for Vim, it's
the fact that people, like me, install cygwin or linux specifically
for learning Radiance, run into this problem, and not understanding
anything about unix are instantly lost.
I don't know quite what to do about this, other than to suggest that people put the Radiance binary directory at the front of their executable search path. I have added a note to the end of the makeall script reminding users how to do this.
-Greg
Jeffrey McGrew wrote:
Is this accessible online someplace?
Uhm... no. Guess not. I thought I had posted it to this
Revit support site where I was talking about Radiance,
but I guess I didn't. Is there a good spot for me to
post it? I don't currently have one.
Well, probably the best place for it is radiance-online.org. If there's no place for it there, I'd be happy to post it on my website. My search engine is nonexistent at the moment, but after a few days Google would index the page and maybe some wayward sould looking for help with installing radiance would stumble upon your howto on my website. Let me know.
No problem. It was just my first big hurtle in learning radiance
and/or the *nix command line, so I thought I'd talk about it to
help others in my position.
Right on.
Jeffrey McGrew wrote:
It's a minor pain. The biggest problem I see with it isn't that
fact that rview is named the same as the alias used for Vim, it's
the fact that people, like me, install cygwin or linux specifically
for learning Radiance, run into this problem, and not understanding
anything about unix are instantly lost.But this rview problem is there in Mandrake, and in Cygwin
too if you install Vim. For Mandrake, I simply removed the
alias with no problems, and for Cygwin I simply uninstalled
Vim, for I use Emacs.
Yeah, I ran into that too with Mandrake, and it pissed me off! I immediately obliterated the damn alias and vi(m) with it. It ranks down there in my bottom 10 braindead editors of all time (DOS edlin also comes to mind). I've always preferred joe; it's compact and powerful enuff for my purposes. I can't imagine for the life of me why anybody'd call vi their editor of choice, but I know for a fact some individuals at Fraunhofer ISE swear by it.
Sorry for the off-topic stuff, hope that won't start an editor feud. But since we're on about editors: emacs sucks. :^)
--Roland
--
Roland Schregle
PhD candidate, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems
RADIANCE Photon Map page: www.ise.fhg.de/radiance/photon-map
END OF LINE. (MCP)
This problem has existed for far too long. The simple and intelligent
fix is to rename the Radiance rview program in the source and makefiles
to radview or some such and be done with it.
Complaining about vi, vim, and standard Unix applications is not a solution,
it is just a band-aid approach. If there are other Radiance tools with
name clashes, then these tools should also be renamed. Radiance is a very
specialized tool used by a very, very. very small number of computer users.
Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Cygwin, and other Unix or unix-like systems
are used by thousands of more users. If you want to make radiance more
accessible and useable by others, then one of solutions is to fix these
minor problems.
Regards,
-Steve
Steven Baker
[email protected]
Roland Schregle writes:
Jeffrey McGrew wrote:
> It's a minor pain. The biggest problem I see with it isn't that
> fact that rview is named the same as the alias used for Vim, it's
> the fact that people, like me, install cygwin or linux specifically
> for learning Radiance, run into this problem, and not understanding
> anything about unix are instantly lost.
>
> But this rview problem is there in Mandrake, and in Cygwin
> too if you install Vim. For Mandrake, I simply removed the
> alias with no problems, and for Cygwin I simply uninstalled
> Vim, for I use Emacs.Yeah, I ran into that too with Mandrake, and it pissed me off! I
immediately obliterated the damn alias and vi(m) with it. It ranks down
there in my bottom 10 braindead editors of all time (DOS edlin also
comes to mind). I've always preferred joe; it's compact and powerful
enuff for my purposes. I can't imagine for the life of me why anybody'd
call vi their editor of choice, but I know for a fact some individuals
at Fraunhofer ISE swear by it.Sorry for the off-topic stuff, hope that won't start an editor feud. But
since we're on about editors: emacs sucks. :^)--Roland
--
Roland Schregle
PhD candidate, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems
RADIANCE Photon Map page: www.ise.fhg.de/radiance/photon-mapEND OF LINE. (MCP)
_______________________________________________
Radiance-general mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.radiance-online.org/mailman/listinfo/radiance-general
Actually, I think there is an easier solution. If rview is renamed, then
there`s the backwards compatibility problem. But it should be possible to
use the enemie`s weapons;) as they say, every problem includes it`s own
solution. If an alias is defined, for example "rvi" (pun intended!) pointing
to radiance`s rview (it`s even two letters less to type) This could be
included in the main distribution to be used in case rview colides with vi,
and without compatibility problems. Unfortunately I don`t know how to do
this, or even if it is possible at all, but I hope it makes sense.
Santiago.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
Mark Steven Baker
Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2003 8:36 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Radiance-general] Re: os 10.3 panther raypath setThis problem has existed for far too long. The simple and intelligent
fix is to rename the Radiance rview program in the source and makefiles
to radview or some such and be done with it.Complaining about vi, vim, and standard Unix applications is not
a solution,
it is just a band-aid approach. If there are other Radiance tools with
name clashes, then these tools should also be renamed. Radiance is a very
specialized tool used by a very, very. very small number of
computer users.
Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Cygwin, and other Unix or unix-like systems
are used by thousands of more users. If you want to make radiance more
accessible and useable by others, then one of solutions is to fix these
minor problems.Regards,
-SteveSteven Baker
[email protected]
Roland Schregle wrote:
Yeah, I ran into that too with Mandrake, and it pissed me off!
Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with renaming the rview
program in Radiance, and I agree that it would be the cleanest
solution. Backwards compatibility problems may be solved through
an alias to the old name by those who really can't change their
habits.
I'm not sure which one came first, but the rview hard link to vi
has to be expected on every unix type system (vi is required by
posix). As has already been mentioned, we're an extremely small
minority in comparison, so if anyone should move it would be us.
I can't imagine for the life of me why anybody'd
call vi their editor of choice,
Because it's by far the fastest and most efficient editor of all
I have ever tried (admittedly, only after you have climbed the
initial learning curve). Not every tool is for every person, so
you shouldn't be too surprised about other people making
different choices than you would.
but I know for a fact some individuals
at Fraunhofer ISE swear by it.
Not to mention that, if I'm not mistaken, Radiance has always
been almost exclusively developed with vi (gvim in my case).
-schorsch
--
Georg Mischler -- simulations developer -- schorsch at schorsch com
+schorsch.com+ -- lighting design tools -- http://www.schorsch.com/
As much as I hate to change program names, I confess that I can think of no better alternative. The "rview" link to vim was added in recent times, I guess. I'm not even sure what it does differently. I knew that the "view" command was a read-only version of "vi", so it must be related.
If we're going to change program names to avoid conflicts, we may as well do it right. I wrote the attached script to detect identically named programs in a user's search path. Just put it on your system and execute it:
% chmod +x radcollisions.csh
% ./radcollisions.csh
The script works by first removing components from the search path that lead to the program "macbethcal," which I'm assuming is Radiance-specific. Here is the output from my OS X system:
% radcollisions.csh
path was ( /usr/local/ray /Users/gward/bin /usr/local/bin /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /Developer/Tools /usr/X11R6/bin . )
path changed to ( /usr/local/bin /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /Developer/Tools /usr/X11R6/bin )
Conflicting executables on Darwin anyhere.local 7.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0: Wed Sep 24 15:48:39 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-517.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
/usr/bin/gencat
/usr/bin/lam
/usr/bin/rview
If people can run it on their systems and send the output directly to my account <[email protected]>, this should give me a pretty good survey of what's out there. If you want to help me even more, you can run "man -k" on the programs it names and send this to me as well. This will give me an idea of where the conflicting programs originated.
Thanks!
-Greg
radcollisions.csh (1.47 KB)
Sorry Roland, I gotta side with Georg on this one. vi was totally impenetrable to me at first, but as soon as I got a handle on the basic functions, I was totally hooked on it. I still use GUI-fied editors for html and other tasks, but when editing radiance scenes I just love vi!
-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-
Rob Guglielmetti
[email protected]
On Nov 26, 2003, at 8:44 PM, Georg Mischler wrote:
I can't imagine for the life of me why anybody'd
call vi their editor of choice,Because it's by far the fastest and most efficient editor of all
I have ever tried (admittedly, only after you have climbed the
initial learning curve). Not every tool is for every person, so
you shouldn't be too surprised about other people making
different choices than you would.
Rob Guglielmetti wrote:
Jeffrey McGrew wrote:
Is this accessible online someplace?
Uhm... no. Guess not. I thought I had posted it to this
Revit support site where I was talking about Radiance,
but I guess I didn't. Is there a good spot for me to
post it? I don't currently have one.Well, probably the best place for it is radiance-online.org.
Anyone is welcomed with open arms. The '3rd party addon' section on radiance-online got rebranded 'extensions&examples' with a note about sending files.
-Peter
--
pab-opto, Freiburg, Germany, www.pab-opto.de
Rob Guglielmetti wrote:
I can't imagine for the life of me why anybody'd
call vi their editor of choice,Because it's by far the fastest and most efficient editor of all
I have ever tried (admittedly, only after you have climbed the
initial learning curve). Not every tool is for every person, so
you shouldn't be too surprised about other people making
different choices than you would.Sorry Roland, I gotta side with Georg on this one. vi was totally impenetrable to me at first, but as soon as I got a handle on the basic functions, I was totally hooked on it. I still use GUI-fied editors for html and other tasks, but when editing radiance scenes I just love vi!
Maybe I'm just stuck in the WordStar mould, having cut my teeth on the old Borland development environments and the *original* WordStar. Old habits die hard.
On Nov 26, 2003, at 8:44 PM, Georg Mischler wrote:
--
Roland Schregle
PhD candidate, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems
RADIANCE Photon Map page: www.ise.fhg.de/radiance/photon-map
END OF LINE. (MCP)
Hi Santiago and everybody else in this thread
Thought i'd follow your suggestion and see if i could get an alias to work and so avoid the rview - vi problem. (More importantly i needed to get the raypath to be set properly in X11).
Key thing seems to be that while .bash_profile may work for terminal (a nod to Rob here), for Xwindows all those settings need to be put in .bashrc (well at least that was all that would work for me - it seems to ignore .bash_profile .login .profile etc.etc.).
In .bashrc put:
PATH=.:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin/ray:$PATH
RAYPATH=.:/usr/local/lib/ray
alias rvw='/usr/local/bin/ray/rview'
export PATH RAYPATH
Just to clarify - i find it better to install Radiance binaries in usr/local/bin/ray - and so keep them distinct from the other binaries i have in bin.
Those who use he default location would have:
alias rvw='/usr/local/bin/rview'
But anyway the alias trick seems to work fine with 'rvw' or 'rvi' or whatever.
It's certainly useful for a reducing the typing on other commands as well.
I guess another one of those things that would be useful in a single point guideline for installing into Panther.
cheers
alex
On 27 Nov 2003, at 12:07 am, Santiago Torres wrote:
Actually, I think there is an easier solution. If rview is renamed, then
there`s the backwards compatibility problem. But it should be possible to
use the enemie`s weapons;) as they say, every problem includes it`s own
solution. If an alias is defined, for example "rvi" (pun intended!) pointing
to radiance`s rview (it`s even two letters less to type) This could be
included in the main distribution to be used in case rview colides with vi,
and without compatibility problems. Unfortunately I don`t know how to do
this, or even if it is possible at all, but I hope it makes sense.Santiago.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
Mark Steven Baker
Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2003 8:36 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Radiance-general] Re: os 10.3 panther raypath setThis problem has existed for far too long. The simple and intelligent
fix is to rename the Radiance rview program in the source and makefiles
to radview or some such and be done with it.Complaining about vi, vim, and standard Unix applications is not
a solution,
it is just a band-aid approach. If there are other Radiance tools with
name clashes, then these tools should also be renamed. Radiance is a very
specialized tool used by a very, very. very small number of
computer users.
Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Cygwin, and other Unix or unix-like systems
are used by thousands of more users. If you want to make radiance more
accessible and useable by others, then one of solutions is to fix these
minor problems.Regards,
-SteveSteven Baker
[email protected]_______________________________________________
Radiance-general mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.radiance-online.org/mailman/listinfo/radiance-general
*******************************************************
A. J. Summerfield [email protected]
Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside a dog, it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx
*******************************************************
if you wish to use x11 graphical capabilities from apple terminal, add this at the end of your .bash_profile:
if [ -z "${DISPLAY}" ];then echo -n
export DISPLAY=':0'
fi
... you will be able to use ximage in terminal.app and see images through x11.
cheers,
pillo
On 28 Nov 2003, at 19:25, alex Summerfield wrote:
Hi Santiago and everybody else in this thread
Thought i'd follow your suggestion and see if i could get an alias to work and so avoid the rview - vi problem. (More importantly i needed to get the raypath to be set properly in X11).
Key thing seems to be that while .bash_profile may work for terminal (a nod to Rob here), for Xwindows all those settings need to be put in .bashrc (well at least that was all that would work for me - it seems to ignore .bash_profile .login .profile etc.etc.).
In .bashrc put:
PATH=.:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin/ray:$PATH
RAYPATH=.:/usr/local/lib/ray
alias rvw='/usr/local/bin/ray/rview'
export PATH RAYPATHJust to clarify - i find it better to install Radiance binaries in usr/local/bin/ray - and so keep them distinct from the other binaries i have in bin.
Those who use he default location would have:
alias rvw='/usr/local/bin/rview'But anyway the alias trick seems to work fine with 'rvw' or 'rvi' or whatever.
It's certainly useful for a reducing the typing on other commands as well.I guess another one of those things that would be useful in a single point guideline for installing into Panther.
cheers
alexOn 27 Nov 2003, at 12:07 am, Santiago Torres wrote:
Actually, I think there is an easier solution. If rview is renamed, then
there`s the backwards compatibility problem. But it should be possible to
use the enemie`s weapons;) as they say, every problem includes it`s own
solution. If an alias is defined, for example "rvi" (pun intended!) pointing
to radiance`s rview (it`s even two letters less to type) This could be
included in the main distribution to be used in case rview colides with vi,
and without compatibility problems. Unfortunately I don`t know how to do
this, or even if it is possible at all, but I hope it makes sense.Santiago.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
Mark Steven Baker
Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2003 8:36 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Radiance-general] Re: os 10.3 panther raypath setThis problem has existed for far too long. The simple and intelligent
fix is to rename the Radiance rview program in the source and makefiles
to radview or some such and be done with it.Complaining about vi, vim, and standard Unix applications is not
a solution,
it is just a band-aid approach. If there are other Radiance tools with
name clashes, then these tools should also be renamed. Radiance is a very
specialized tool used by a very, very. very small number of
computer users.
Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Cygwin, and other Unix or unix-like systems
are used by thousands of more users. If you want to make radiance more
accessible and useable by others, then one of solutions is to fix these
minor problems.Regards,
-SteveSteven Baker
[email protected]_______________________________________________
Radiance-general mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.radiance-online.org/mailman/listinfo/radiance-general*******************************************************
A. J. Summerfield [email protected]
Faculty of Architecture, University of SydneyOutside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside a dog, it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx
*******************************************************