Getting Set Up

The Nuprl system is written in a combination of Common Lisp  and an older dialect of ML. We assume here that your Nuprl administrator has already done the following:

1. Installed the Nuprl directories and compiled the various Nuprl files.
2. Compiled the Nuprl Lisp and ML files and created a Lisp image (disksave) that has these files loaded as well as some initial Nuprl theories.
3. Set up a shell script that both starts up this Lisp image and starts up Nuprl 's window system. Below, we assume that the alias nuprl has been set up for this script.

4. Installed the Nuprl font files  for X in some directory FONT-DIRFONT-DIR where your workstation can access them.

To set-up, do the following:

1. Add the following lines to the start of your .xinitrc  after any initial comments (in particular after the first line if it starts #! /bin/csh).

   xset fp+ FONT-DIR
   xset fp rehash

   These commands tell X the font path  to the nuprl fonts. The first time you run Nuprl you should also run these commands interactively in some shell to add the font path to your current X environment. The current Nuprl fonts in order of size from smallest to largest are named nuprl-8x13 , nuprl-13  and nuprl-20 . If you want to look at one of the fonts, use the xfd command. For example, run in a shell:

   xfd -font nuprl-13 &

2. Familiarize yourself with some editor that supports 8-bit fonts and has a capability for starting sub-shells. For example, lucid-emacs, epoch and emacs version 19. Vanilla 18.xx versions of emacs do not support 8-bit fonts, although there are several 8-bit patches available. You should run this editor with one of the nuprl fonts.

   Such an editor is not strictly necessary, but is a good idea for several reasons:

   • Nuprl frequently writes output to Lisp's `standard output' which is almost invariably the same window as that which Nuprl is started up from. If Nuprl is started up from an editor sub-shell, it becomes easy to review this output and save portions of it to files.

   • This output is in Nuprl 's 8-bit font.

   • Listings of theory files use Nuprl 's 8-bit font. These files contain definitions, theorems and proofs, and it is often useful to be able to browse them.