THE MAIN SETTINGS WINDOW
The settings window can be reached from the main P5 window, by pressing the
button.
From within the "P5 About box", you can access the main settings window.
The settings that you can set here are to be set after installation. When you exit P5, these settings
will be saved (in the windows version using the windows registry, in the linux version using a hidden settings
file).
Most users will not have to edit these settings, except maybe for the setting in the field
(see below).
you can enter the base installation path. This base installation path should have subdirectories
like "help" and "bin". P5 uses this path to access the help files, to find the executables "lyapunov.exe"
and "separatrice.exe", and to find the P5/Reduce and P5/Maple code.
The most convenient way to alter this field is by pressing the
button and browsing towards the installation directory.
Normally, P5 automatically detects the correct path.
you can enter the sum-table path. This location should be a writeable location.
P5 uses this path to store its sum-tables (during calculation of lyapunov coefficients). This tables
contain lists of sum-decompositions of positive integers in N parts. Since for large values of N
these tables are hard to compute, they are stored on disc so that they only need to be computed the
first time they are needed.
The most convenient way to alter this field is by pressing the
button and browsing towards the directory of your choice.
By default, P5 defines the sum-table path as a subdirectory of the installation directory.
Change this only if the users of P5 do not always have write access in the installation directory.
In that case, it is most convenient to use the system's temporary directory as the sum-table path.
you can enter the system's temporary path. P5 uses this to store temporary files. Users of P5 need to have
write access to this directory.
The most convenient way to alter this field is by pressing the
button and browsing towards the directory of your choice.
you can enter the location of the command-line version of a recent maple installation.
The most convenient way to alter this field is by pressing the
button and browsing towards the executable. On Windows,
you can find the binary files of Maple in the subdirectory "bin.win" of the Maple installation.
Up to version 9.5 the command line version was named "cmaple#.#.exe", where #.# contains the version
number. From version 10 the command line version is simply called "cmaple.exe". On Linux,
just enter "cmaple" in this field, and use the Linux command line to
define cmaple as a symbolic link towards your version of maple.
After you have entered the settings, press the
to confirm the changes. Press
to cancel any changes.
The button will reset the settings. In particular P5 will then try to locate Maple automatically by inspecting the windows registry.
Note: It is advised to try to study a trivial vector field, like {xdot=-y, ydot=x}, using P5, in order to test the installation.