20 July 2007
INSTALLATION
Installing From a CD:
1. Use Windows Explorer or My Computer to view the contents of the CD. You should see only tfqa.exe and a copy of this file. Double click on tfqa.exe.
2. You will get a popup window with the cursor in the section of the window labeled "Extract to". Change this say "c:\program files\". Press the EXTRACT button on the top right of the popup. This will create the folder "c:\program files\TFQA" on your hard drive in which the programs and documentation will be stored. (If you want the TFQA folder to be somewhere else, modify the "extract to" path accordingly.)
3. The computer needs to know where the programs can be found:
3a. For Windows 95/98, set the Path by modifying the computer's AUTOEXEC.BAT file. This can be done using Start>Run>SYSEDIT. After any other path
statements in autoexec.bat add as a separate line:
path c:\progra~1\tfqa\;%path%
then close the window, telling SYSEDIT to save the changes. (Alternately you can change the file c:\autoexec.bat using Notepad). Ignore this for other versions of Windows.
3b. For Windows XP (a similar method probably works for Windows 2000), to change the path permanently click on Start, then select Control Panel, then double-click on System, click the Advanced tab and then click on the Environment Variables button. Then select the PATH command in the top window and click on Edit. Click anywhere in the Variable Value text and hit the End key to go to the end of the string and add the text ";C:/PROGRAM FILES/TFQA" without the quote marks. Click on OK three times and then close the Control Panel. Alternately, you can reset the path each time you open a Command Prompt window. To do this copy the file TFQAPath.bat from c:\program files\TFQA\Setup to C:\Windows (Windows 95/98/XP) or C:\WinNT (Windows NT/2000).
4. The latest documentation for TFQA is on the web. A local copy, in html format (viewable by a browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer) is provided with the software. To simplify access to the documehntation (the programs do not have built-in help) in Windows Explorer, navigate to c:\program files\tfqa\setup and copy the two icons for local and web access to the doumentation to your desktop, start menu, or another convenient place.
5. As described in Getting Started, below, you will want to look at at least some portions of the documentation. n.
Installing From the Internet:
1. Using your browser download tfqa.zip to a temporary location on your hard drive.
2. Unzip tfqa.zip using WIndows XP or a zip utility such as Winzip or ZipCentral. In unzipping the file, the program will ask for your password which must be entered exactly as it was provided to you in the email. The utility will likely default to extracting to the current folder (the one with tfqa.zip) which should be fine. This will result in the creation of a new file tfqa.exe.(If you do not have a zip utility, I recommend ZipCentral, a freeware utility available at http://zipcentral.iscool.net/)
3. Follow the directions above for "Installing From a CD", double clicking on tfqa.exe wherever you have stored it instead of on the CD).
4. TFQA.Zip and TFQA.EXE can be deleted after a successful install.
DOCUMENTATION
The latest version of the full toolkit documentation is available online at http://tfqa.com/doc. A pdf of a now out-of-date printed version of the manual (147p from 3/11/2006) is contained in c:\program files\TFQA\doc\toolkit.pdf. This pdf manual is formatted as 8.5x11 printed page images and can be viewed or printed in very high quality on any printer using Adobe Acrobat 5 or above. If you don't have the Acrobat Reader, you should, and it can be downloaded free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Once Acrobat is downloaded and installed (it may already be on your computer), double click on toolkit.pdf to view or print the manual.
GETTING STARTED
You will need to read at least Overview of Programs the Program Conventions, and Running the Programs under Windows. You will also want to read the documentation sections on the programs you want to use (although there will probably be many that you don't need). Some basic information is provided in this section. If you want to use the programs that use comma separate value (CSV) input you must read Programs Using CSV Interface. Several of the core programs now are provided in this format. In many cases these programs will run larger programs than their non-CSV counterparts.
Running the Tools for Quantitative Archaeology under Windows is a bit unusual because these programs are all either DOS programs or console mode true Windows programs that do not (yet) have sophisticated file navigation capabilities. The essential thing is that the programs look in the proper folder for the data files you need and that they output files to the same place. A related issue is that these programs do not deal with long file names and are restricted to, at most, 8 character file names (with no spaces or special characters) followed, optionally, by a period and a 3 character extension (e.g., MYDATA.ADF). If you have files you want these programs to read that don't meet these DOS conventions, you must rename them so they do.
Once you have installed the programs, please read the Program Conventions, and Running the Programs under Windows before you try running anything.
RECENT CHANGES & INFORMATION
Using CSV Files
In the CSV subdirectory, created when you install the program, are beta versions of several of the main programs that will accept comma separated value (CSV) input rather than the standard program input (with separate files for data and row and column labels) described in the documentation. If you preparing data files to analyze with Excel or another spreadsheet (or want to go back and forth through Excel), these may be easier to use (do File>Save As>CSV in Excel). These new versions of the programs use dynamic storage allocation which allows them to do problems of almost unlimited size. These are both steps on the road to a Windows interface, but for now they retain the DOS-like interface though they are true windows programs. SeePrograms Using CSV Interface for more information and a description of the input format.
FILES AND FOLDERS
In general, you don't need to know this. The main TFQA directory contains the latest versions of all the programs in the package. With the except of the programs that produce graphics directly (e.g., kmplt and ldplt) and a few other minor programs, the TFQA programs have been converted from their original DOS forms to Windows console programs that handle bigger problems and run faster. These Windows programs have essentially the same interface as the DOS programs. The DOS versions of the programs that have been converted to Windows are included in the \TFQA\DOSTool folder. If for some reason you run into problems, you can copy these versions over those in the \TFQA folder. The Windows versions of those same programs are duplicated in \TFQA\WinTool.