Copyright (C) 1998 Tuomas J. Lukka
DISTRIBUTED WITH NO WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. # See the GNU Library General Public License (file COPYING in the distribution) # for conditions of use and redistribution.

To install, you need Perl 5.004_04 or later as well as an OpenGLcompatible library (e.g. IRIX native opengl or the freely available Mesa library). You also need an ANSI C compiler and the X development libraries as well as an X server to run this program with. If you plan to use jpeg textures, you will also neet libjpeg.

Downloads

perl 5.004_04: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0 libwww-perl: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/LWP/ Mesa: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~brianp/Mesa.html FreeType: http://www.freetype.org libJPEG ftp://ftp.uu.net:/graphics/jpeg/ (note you need a fairly recent version)

        libpng1.0.0     http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png/
         (or later and the libraries it requires, e.g. libz (aka zlib))

        gnu make, if you don't have it yet
                        any GNU archive

        Additionally, if you want to embed FreeWRL into Netscape,
        get XSwallow
                        http://skynet.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/XSwallow.html

NOTE: when compiling these libraries on systems where there are several different binary formats (notably IRIX), make sure you compile these libraries into the same format your Perl was compiled with (usually -n32 on IRIX).

NOTE2: libwww-perl shouldn't be strictly necessary if you are using only local documents -- however I haven't tested the code in ./URL.pm so there might be trouble. Get it anyway, it's very simple to install and mighty useful -- you can get documents from the WWW just by "get 'http://foo.org'" in your script.

NOTE3: Mesa has been known to compile badly sometimes, e.g. with linux-i386-elf on a 486. PLEASE MAKE SURE THE MESA DEMOS WORK FIRST BEFORE COMPLAINING TO ME!

First, edit vrml.conf to explain where your OpenGL and other libraries are - the current settings are for finding the Mesa library in my home directory so you will probably want to change that. Change -lMesaGL to -lGL if you have native OpenGL. You can also copy vrml.conf to ~/.vrml.conf to retain settings between use - remember to check back to the distribution file if you use a newer version to see if something has changed.

TO GET JAVASCRIPT WORKING, YOU MUST CURRENTLY DO THE FOLLOWING:: Go to JS/js/ subdirectory and compile the Mozilla javascript code. I don't know how to do it on your platform, on linux simply

cd JS/js; make
worked. NOTE: you must use GNU make to make the JS/js directory. ALSO, YOU MUST EDIT THE LIBRARY PATH IN vrml.conf!!!! Otherwise, the support for javascript WILL NOT WORK.

Next, try

perl Makefile.PL

in the main FreeWRL directory. If there are any errors, correct them first. If there is no -ljs, see the above step: this is the javascript library. Email me if the problem persists.

Email me if the problem persists.

Then, just say

make

which should compile and install (in the blib/ directory) the files. Because this release is strictly alpha, installing them anywhere else is not advisable. !!! NOTE! DO NOT SAY "make install"!!! THIS IS NOT YET EXPECTED TO WORK! I have not yet had time to streamline the building/ installing because of so many other things to do with this that the browser only works if you run it from the distribution directory. IF YOU WANT THIS TO WORK PROPERLY NOW, SEND A PATCH. For my priorities, spec and EAI compliance comes first.

For the java interface, you have to first create the named pipes via the commands

       mknod .javapipej p
       mknod .javapipep p

or whatever on your system and set your classpath and the correct executable java interpreter in VRMLJava.pm (these will change later as I clean up interfaces). These are all just very quick hacks to get the system up and running. Of course, if you want to patch them to work in a nicer way, I would be very grateful ;) !!!NOTE!!! On some operating systems, the java process seems to be left behind -- if that happens, kill it, otherwise it'll mess up the next browser invocation.

The 'make' command in the main directory does not recompile the java files yet, but you can go to the java/ directory and type 'make' (fix the makefile for your system first).

Likewise, it does not run genJS.pl in the JS/ subdirectory, you have to do that by hand.

Q. I am running XYZ_OS on an ZFB machine and

there are no configuration files for XYZ_OS and the make step crashes on install. Seems to be related to the config/*.mk lookup in the JS area. The Mesa libs make seems to work. Any Ideas?

Yes, it appears that the mozilla JS library (of which the JS/js subdirectory is a verbatim copy (except as discussed in MODIFICATIONS).

What you can try is to first see which filename the makefile looks for in the config/ directory, then copy one of the SunOS files to that filename and then edit the settings in that file (e.g. which C compiler, etc). This is something I can't do, not having access to that type of machine and not knowing how exactly one must compile files etc. on it. When you make the file, I'd be very grateful for a copy.

I'm probably going to try to do something about making the build process more flexible but so far there is much more to do before that, such as complete spec compliance as well as EAI.

Also, note that "make install" doe not work yet, as mentioned above. This is strictly a development version and as such, you need to run it in the distribution directory ;)

Q. How do I use FreeWRL with XSwallow?

1. See The freewrl manpage (which is in freewrl.PL in POD format)