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Analog 5.03: Starting to use analog under Windows

This describes how to set up analog under Windows 95/NT or later. Windows 3.1 users will have to read the section on other platforms instead.

Here is the really short summary:

  1. Edit analog.cfg
  2. Run analog
  3. Read Report.html
When you've downloaded analog, and either you or your browser has unzipped it, you will find in the analog folder a configuration file called analog.cfg and the analog executable itself, as well as the Readme, the Licence (which you must read and agree to before using analog) and a couple of other files. There is no setup.exe: analog is already ready to run without one.

(Some unzip programs are broken, and do not create folders when they should. If you don't have a folder called lang inside the analog folder, create one and put all the files called *.lng and *.tab into it.)

There are two ways of running analog. You can either run it from Windows (by single-clicking or double-clicking on its icon, depending on your setup), or you can run it from the DOS command prompt (under Start-Programs). If you run it from Windows, it will create a DOS window to run in. When it's finished, it will produce an output file called Report.html. The first time you run it, this may all happen almost instantly. For help in interpreting the output, see What the results mean.

You can configure analog by putting commands in the configuration file, analog.cfg. Although this is less familiar to Windows users than pressing buttons etc., it's really much simpler and more flexible when you get used to it. You can edit analog.cfg using any plain text editor, for example Notepad. One command you will need straight away is 
LOGFILE logfilename    # to set where your logfile lives
The logfile must be stored locally -- analog won't use FTP or HTTP to fetch it from the internet. There's a sample logfile supplied with the program.

There's a list of basic commands later in the Readme. Also there are a few to get you started in the configuration file already, but there are lots of others available. You can read about all the commands in the section on customising analog.

In some ways, it's easier to run analog from the DOS command prompt, because you get to see any error or warning messages more easily. Also, if you run analog from the command prompt, there is another way to give options, via command line arguments, given on the command line after the program name. These are just shortcuts for configuration file commands. You can use the command line arguments if you run analog from a batch file too.

If you want to compile your own version of analog (it's written in C), or just to read the source code, it's available from the analog home page. (It's the same source code for all versions).

Go to the analog home page.

Stephen Turner
07 July 2001

Need help with analog? Use the analog-help mailing list.

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