Robot is a general purpose plotting and data analysis program.
The main documentation is contained in the file Docs/RobotManual.ps.

Precompiled binaries for Sun's, DECstations and LINUX systems are also
available by anonymous ftp to ftp.astro.psu.edu

To be able to build Robot you need to have:

1) a C compiler
2) the public domain f2c converter (see below) or a FORTRAN compiler 
3) XView built on your system
Note:
*) This version has only been built on a Sun running OS 4.1.1
and a DECstation running Ultrix V4.2 (see appendix)
This version itself will not compile straight off under Solaris
2.x. However, it is possible to make some changes to enable
use under Solaris 2.x.
*) There is a Makefile in the Robot directory (no imake files!)
You might have to hack on this.
*) You can either type "make" in the top level directory
or in the Robot directory.
*) The executable is Robot/robot

If you're not running OpenWindows when you do Make you may
have to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the correct directory e.g.

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH  /usr/local/openwin3/lib


You'll also have to either edit the Makefile to point to the
XView include directory or do a

setenv OPENWINHOME /usr/local/openwin3

(or wherever the OpenWindows main directory is located).

If you don't have a FORTRAN compiler it is still possible to build
Robot using C code converted via the f2c program.  To build using this
code use the makefile.f2c located in the Robot directory. (N.B. a
common mistake in installing f2c is not to add #define USE_STRLEN when
creating libI77 - this is needed on Sun's and DECstations - also note
that versions of f2c before May 19th did not correctly cope with
"err =" in FORTRAN internal I/O).
f2c can be obtained by ftp from research.att.com (log in as "netlib"
instead of "anonymous").


The LANGUAGE flag in the makefiles determines whether Robot will
attempt to use US or British spellings for labels etc.


Although I can't guarantee to fix all problems please _DO_ let me know
about any problems you have or suggestions for changes. 

If you publish a paper in a journal which includes a graph produced by
Robot I'd be grateful if you could send me a reprint.

Robin Corbet				    |   corbet@astro.psu.edu 
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics    |	(814) 863 7946	- voice
525 Davey Laboratory 			    |	(814) 863 3399	- FAX
Pennsylvania State University		    |	(814) 865 2977	- FAX
PA 16802, USA				    |


/*
 * These routines are to be considered prototype, developmental software and
 * we reserve the right to make changes and improvements to these routines at
 * any time.  We retain full copyright protection for the software posted on
 * this directory.  Users are authorized to make copies and use this software
 * at their own risk. PSU makes no representations about  the
 * suitability of  this software for any purpose.  It is provided ``as is''
 * without express or implied warranty.
 */


Appendix - DECstations
----------------------
(This refers to MIPS based Ultrix machines - not OSF/1 Alphas)

As I have a Sun, not a DECstation Robot has not been very extensively
tested on a DEC. I have built it on a remote machine and displayed it
on my Sun. The most obvious bugs brought to light by compiling on a DEC
were fixed.

To build on a DECstation:

*) If you don't have XView you can get both ported source and
binaries for DECstations via anonymous ftp from media-lab.mit.edu.
(Make sure your copy is after mid-September 1992)
Fonts are available from ftp.x.org.

*) Alter the makefile in Fitsio and/or Fitsioc to build
fitsdec.f instead of fitssun.f

The present version has been tested using f2c and the DEC FORTRAN
compiler. I have not attempted to use the MIPS FORTRAN compiler.

You may wish to copy the file named text_extras_menu to
a file named .text_extras_menu in your home directory to avoid
XView complaining about this file being missing.

Appendix - LINUX
----------------

makefile.f2c should work under LINUX.
Since a lot of the code is in FORTRAN and so malloc's cannot be done, if
you are using a system with limited RAM you may want to make the value
of "msiz" in "msizcom smaller.

The LINUX version has only been tested on a monochrome display.

Building under LINUX results in a lot of warning messages about
pointers and integers, these don't appear to have too many bad
effects!
