Dyalog APL V17.0 Third Issue: Installation READ ME FIRST

This document contains information that may affect the installation of Dyalog APL.

This file is setup_readme.htm and is included in the help directory in the Dyalog installation directory.

Table of Contents

Licence Types

You should have received or downloaded an installation image appropriate to your licence type; Educational or Non-Commercial users should install from the Non-commercial image, all other registered users should install from the Commercial image.

If you believe that your image is for the wrong licence, please contact sales@dyalog.com

Installing Dyalog APL under Windows

Dyalog 17.0 can be installed either with administrator rights, or without. Dyalog Ltd strongly recommends that whenever possible, the installation is performed with administrator privileges.

An installation performed without administrator privileges has the following limitations:

Note: Dyalog strongly recommends that you include the VS2015 runtime packages when you install Dyalog APL; failure to do so may result in the failure of .Net-related code.

In order to install this version it will be necessary to uninstall any previously installed Version 17.0 images. Note that it is not necessary to uninstall and reinstall the IME. Note: It is however necessary to reboot your PC between uninstalling any previous Version 17.0 and installing a newer one.

Note: the installation of Dyalog APL will require a reboot of the system to be fully effective !

If you are installing under Windows Vista, then we recommend that you disable User Account Control before installing Dyalog APL. UAC is enabled and disabled in Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Turn User Account Control on or off. It is best to apply any patches to the interpreter before reenabling UAC.

To perform a default installation of Dyalog APL with administrator privileges:

  1. Extract the contents of the downloaded zip file into a temporary directory
  2. Double click on the newly extracted setup.exe (you are probably reading this having taken these two steps !).
  3. Select "Yes" to the question "Do you want to restart the installer with Administrator privileges?"
  4. Select "Yes" in the User Account Control pop up. Note that this Msgbox may hide behind other windows !
  5. Enter your serial number into the field on the setup form. Again note that this form may hide behind other windows.
  6. If installing the Unicode Edition, ensure that the Unicode IME is selected - it is optional for the Classic Edition.
  7. Click on Default Install.
  8. You must accept the Licence terms which will appear in a pop-up window to continue with the installation.
  9. At the end of the installation process you will be prompted to reboot your PC; Dyalog APL will not be fully installed until the PC has been rebooted - it is recommended that you perform that reboot as soon as possible having installed Dyalog APL.
  10. Double click on the new Dyalog APL shortcut on your desktop; enjoy Dyalog APL!

To perform a default installation of Dyalog APL without administrator privileges:

  1. Double click on setup.exe (you are probably reading this having taken that step !).
  2. Select "No" to the question "Do you want to restart the installer with Administrator privileges?"
  3. Enter your serial number into the field on the setup form. Again note that this form may hide behind other windows.
  4. Click on Default Install.
  5. You must accept the Licence terms which will appear in a pop-up window to continue with the installation.
  6. Click on Finish. No reboot is necessary.
  7. Double click on the new Dyalog APL shortcut on your desktop; enjoy Dyalog APL!

The newly-installed files will be put in a directory similar to c:\Users\andys\AppData\Local\Programs\Dyalog\Dyalog APL-64 17.0 Unicode.

Additional information about installing Dyalog APL can be found here on the Dyalog Forums.

If you have problems typing APL characters, it is worth taking a look at the links at the bottom of the Fonts and Keyboard page on the Dyalog website at www.dyalog.com/apl-font-keyboard.htm.

Installing Dyalog APL under macOS

To install:

Dyalog checks for the existence of the file ~/.dyalog/dyalog.config. If it does not exist, this file is created.
dyalog.config should be used to set non-default options for configuration parameters such as MAXWS or TRACE_ON_ERROR; this file is read each time APL is started, and these values used in preference to the default values. Dyalog recommends that this file is edited rather than the mapl startup script which will be overwritten whenever a later revision of the current version of Dyalog APL is installed.
Dyalog intends to improve the nature of the configuration file; future versions of this file will have a different structure, and will simply define name-value pairs.
All of the configuration parameters that are used by Dyalog under macOS can be found in the Dyalog for macOS Installation and Configuration Guide. The full list of the possible values that can be defined in this file currently appear in the Configuration Parameters section of the Dyalog for Microsoft Windows Installation and Configuration Guide.

Note that in 15.0 onwards new macOS-specific keyboard mappings have been added to the product. However these are not currently selected; these can be selected in the preferences dialog box.

Installing Dyalog APL under AIX/Linux

Please follow the instructions in the Dyalog for UNIX Installation and Configuration Guide manual.
This can be found on http://docs.dyalog.com/17.0.

Under Linux (including the Raspberry Pi) if you install from your desktop you should find a Dyalog APL (TTY) icon in the start menus. If you subsequently install RIDE 4, a "Dyalog" icon is also added; this causes RIDE 4 to start and to start a Dyalog session.

Under Linux (including Pi) the script /usr/bin/dyalog is under the control of the update_alternatives system. If you have multiple versions of Dyalog APL installed on Linux and you wish to change the version which /usr/bin/dyalog starts, use sudo update_alternatives --config dyalog.
Dyalog recommends that you never edit /usr/bin/dyalog or $DYALOG/mapl, but rather either take a copy of the script and edit that, or write your own script which sets the environment and then calls the Dyalog-supplied script.

Installing Dyalog APL on Raspberry Pi

Instructions for installing Dyalog APL on a Raspberry Pi can be found at http://packages.dyalog.com/.

Windows: Association of APL fonts with APL versions

If you have multiple versions of Dyalog APL installed on your PC, uninstalling any version may result in the APL fonts being uninstalled. Dyalog has placed a zip file containing the APL fonts here so that you can download and reinstall them.

There are more details in the FAQ section of the Dyalog Forums.

Windows: Association of APL files with APL versions

When a version of Dyalog APL is installed on Windows, files such as workspaces are associated with that newly-installed version. The user command ]fileassociations can be used to change the association, but you will need to run APL with Administator Permissions to make this change.