Chapter 1 – How to Obtain, Implement and Run PLATON
Download and implementation information is available from either:
http://www.cryst.chem.uu.nl/platon/pl030000.html
or
http://www.platonsoft.nl/platon/pl030000.html
(The top one [the university based server] is to be preferred. This might change over time)
For the MS-Windows version see:
http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/~louis/software/platon or
http://www.platonsoft.nl/platon/pl030000.html
or
http://www.cryst.chem.uu.nl/platon/pl030000.html
(The top one is to be preferred as the latest version)
For the LINUX and Mac OS X implementations of PLATON it is generally recommended
to download PLATON as the most recent source code and compile it on the target computer.
Executables for both platforms are available as well though not always compiled from the
latest source or might not always execute on a particular system due to differering library
version dependencies. A Fortran-95 compiler will be needed (e.g the freely downloadable
gfortran compiler or the commercial Intel compiler
ifort.) For Mac OS X the Xcode
package should have been prior installed as well from the installation disk.
1.0 – Download and Implementation Procedure of PLATON using gfortran
1. Open a terminal window
2.
Create a directory
platon and change to that directory
3.
Download (from the WEB page given above)
platon.f.gz (Complete Fortran source
of PLATON) in that directory
4.
Download
xdrvr.c.gz (A small driver routine providing a C-language -Interface to
the X-Window graphics library Xlib)
5.
gunzip both
platon.f.gz and
xdrvr.c.gz
6.
Compile as
gfortran -o platon platon.f xdrvr.c -lX11
7.
Download the test data file
sucrose.spf
8.
Test run the executable as
./platon sucrose.spf and click on ORTEP in the main
menu. An ORTEP illustration will appear. Terminate by clicking on the EXIT button.
9.
When step 8 went o.k., move the PLATON executable to a location is the $PATH.
e.g.
mv platon /usr/local/bin
10.
Download the file
check.def (needed for structure validation).
11.
Include the equivalent for
export CHECKDEF=/Users/user/platon/check.def in a
file such as .bash_profile for Mac-OSX.
12.
PLATON searches for a usable
BROWSER. Alternatively its location can be
specified by setting the environment variable
NETEXE. Help can be obtained in this
way by right-clicking on menu items. The latest information comes over the network.
Alternatively, the help tree can be installed locally. The tarred file
platon_html.tar.gz should be untarred in a suitable location in the file system. It also
untars in a new directory named 'platon' . The environment variable
PLAHTM
should be set to point to this
platon directory.
Notes:
Sometimes additional directives should be added on the compile line to indicate the location
of libraries such as for X11:
-L /usr/X11/lib or
-L /usr/X11R6/lib.
Instead of downloading the individual components separately the file
platon.tar.gz can be
downloaded, gunzipped and untarred. The resulting directory
platon includes all the above
and examples.
Additional environment variables are available for
programs etc. that are not in
standard
expected locations)
POVEXE for POVRAY. E.g. 'setenv POVEXE /usr/local/bin/povray'
(Note: Select the x-povray version from the distribution).
RASEXE for RASMOL. E.g. 'setenv RASEXE /usr/local/bin/rasmol'
R3DEXE for RASTER3D. E.g. 'setenv R3DEXE /usr/local/bin/render
QUESTEXE for the location of cqbatch. E.g. 'setenv QUESTEXE /csd/bin/cqbatch'