Grail Tutorial

Installing Grail

System Requirements

Grail can be installed on any Unix/Linux-based computer, such as a Windows machine with Cygwin, Apple computers with OS X, or any Unix/Linux computer. In addition, Grail requires the following software:

Installation

  1. Download the file grail3.tgz to the directory were you want to place the Grail source files. All Grail files will appear in the subdirectory Grail of this directory.
  2. Extract the Grail files by typing.

    tar xfz grail3.tgz

  3. Find the other programs on which Grail is dependent by typing.

    ./configure --prefix=/some/directory/

    where /some/directory/ is an existing directory where you have write and execute permissions. Grail will be installed in the subdirectory Grail of this directory, whereas the executable will end up in the bin subdirectory. The prefix defaults to /usr/local/.

  4. Compile Grail by typing.

    make

  5. Install Grail

    make install

    to install all Grail files.

  6. Installation is complete. You can start Grail by typing.

    g3

    or by

    /some/directory/bin/g3

    if your shell doesn't normally look at your installation path. Remember also that Grail will try to write its dot and postscript files in the current working directory, so be sure to run Grail from a place where you have write permission if you want to see the postscript output.

Downloading and Installing the Grammar Files

The set of grammar files grammars.tgz contains a set of Grail grammar files developed by different researchers and which illustrate different features of Grail. The rest of this tutorial will make intensive use of these grammars, so it is recommended you install them.

After downloading the file grammars.tgz simply type tar xvfz grammars.tgz to extract the grammars from the archive. This will create a subdirectory grammars containing the different grammars. The next section explains how to load these grammars from Grail's main window.

What's Next

Familiarize yourself with the basics of Grail in the section Loading, Saving and Inspecting Grammars
Last modified: Mon Mar 2 00:09:49 CET 2009