Here are some hints for working with Soar under Unix, particularly at
the Psychology Department, U. of Nottingham.

Frank E. Ritter, 23-Feb-96

Here are several ways to make your environment more comfortable.  The
best way to use this file is to open up the file in Emacs and cut and
paste various bits into your own files.  This is left as a text file,
rather than an html file, to assist in this process.

At Nottingham, this file is
/psyc/lang/soar/7/pst/soar-help/unix-soar.txt, if you are using the
web to read it remotely, save the file locally using your web browser
(on Netscape, the menu item "File: Save as.." will work).  If you got
the tutorial on a diskette, it will be under the soar-help directory.

After you make the changes, the surest and simplest way to make the
changes work is to log out and log back in.  In the case of changes to
your .login or .cshrc, you can also type "source ~/.cshrc" to load the
changes.

ALIAS FOR SOAR

You may find that creating an alias for Soar7 is worthwhile.  This
means that you can just type "soar7" to start up Soar7.  To do
this, insert in your .login file the following line:

alias soar7 /psyc/lang/soar/7/soar7


PUTTING SOAR ON YOUR PATH

When you type a command to Unix, it checks the directories in variable
called PATH to find out what the command is, or what version of the
command to use.  Most people's PATH will not have /psyc/lang/soar/7 on
it, so it must be added.  Alternatively, you can add 'the current
directory' to your path, so that when you type a command, the
directory you are in will be examined as well.  The current directory
is represented as ".".

You may wish to put one of the following lines in your .login:

# to add current directory
set path = ($path .)  

# to add soar/7
set path = (/psyc/lang/soar/7 $path)

# to add both
set path = (/psyc/lang/soar/7 $path .)


STARTING UP EMACS

Several people have had Emacs start up with a window that is too large
for the Xterminals.  I haven't had this problem.  I've traced it to
some variables I set in another file.

You should put the following lines in your .Xdefaults file in your
home directory (if you don't have one, create it using emacs, ie, C-x
C-w and that file name will create it.):

emacs.geometry:	80x55-5+5
emacs*font:	7x13
gnu-emacs*geometry:	80x48
gnu-emacs*VisualBell:	on
gnu-emacs*background:	white
gnu-emacs*foreground:	black

PRINTING

The standard print command in Unix is "lpr" (although this may vary
slightly by site).  If you just type "lpr <file>" (where you take off
the quotes when you type, and insert a file name for <file>), lpr will
print the file to your default printer.  The first thing to note, is
that lpr will notice without regard to your path, which directory you
are in, so you can print files in the same directory.  

The second is that you may not know what your default printer is.  If
you type "echo $PRINTER" to the shell, it will return the name of your
default printer.  This is mostly likely set in your .login file.  You
can change it if you want to another printer.  Once this is set up,
you can also use the Emacs command "M-x print-buffer".

lpr takes optional arguments.  If you want to redirect one file to
another printer, you can use the "-P <printer-name>" argument.  For
example, "lpr -Pl329b hwk1.txt".

You can find out even more about lpr and other Unix commands by typing
"man <command-name>" to the shell, or "M-x man" to Emacs.