The How-to-Get Up-and-Running Page

References: A.L.Spek (2003) J. Appl. Cryst. 36, 7-13 & A.L.Spek (2009) Acta Cryst. D65, 148-155.

HOW TO OBTAIN A COPY OF PLATON

PLATON is free of charge for Academics (as all Academic scientific software should ideally be .....).

For-profit organisations should contact (E-mail address below) or forward a filled out application form (docx) before copying the programs. A PDF version of this form may be found here

Note: All HTTP traffic is logged!

PLATON/UNIX Sources (Fortran & C), executables and test data can be found on the:
PLATON WEBSITE (www.cryst.chem.uu.nl).
PLATON MS-WINDOWS WEB-SITE (Thanks to Louis Farrugia, Glasgow, Scotland)
PLATON rpm's for Fedora Linux (Thanks to Pascal Parois, Glasgow, Scotland)>

Note: A Fortran-95 compatible compiler will be needed (e.g. gfortran, ifort).

In order to get a copy of the program source you will have to download (and gunzip) the two files

platon.f.gz (Complete Fortran source of PLATON - about 115000 lines of code)
xdrvr.c.gz (C-interface to X-window library Xlib)

and compile and link them into an executable with the name 'platon' (see example file with the name compile) and when desirable, a soft link of pluton to platon.

Alternatively, download platon.tar.gz which contains all files in the generic 'unix' directory (will compile without any change on DEC, SGI, SUN, Max-OSX and LINUX platforms).

For the Validation feature, a copy of the file check.def will be needed. (Also included in 'platon.tar.gz).

HOW TO COMPILE

On most UNIX implementations a compile line like the one given below should be sufficient:

gfortran -o platon platon.f xdrvr.c -lX11

Sometimes additional directions should be added on the compile line to indicate the location of libraries such us X11: -L /usr/X11/lib or -L /usr/X11R6/lib.

Some compilations crash when there is no sufficient space in /tmp. Use a cshell command such as

setenv TMPDIR .

instead (or any other directory with enough scratch space).

Some compilers only function when the source code platon.f has been split in smaller pieces (try parts of 10000 lines each) to be compiled separately.

INSTALLATION

The platon executable is best moved to a globally accessible directory

e.g. mv platon /usr/local/bin

In addition a link ln -s pluton platon in the same directory will give a direct path to PLUTON.

Some environment variables can be set (for programs etc. that are not in standard locations)

POVEXE for POVRAY. E.g. 'setenv POVEXE /usr/local/bin/povray'
(Note: Select the x-povray version from the distribution).
RASEXE for RASMOL. E.g. 'setenv RASEXE /usr/local/bin/rasmol'
R3DEXE for RASTER3D. E.g. 'setenv R3DEXE /usr/local/bin/render'
CHECKDEF for the location of the file 'check.def'.
E.g. 'setenv CHECKDEF /mnt/spea/check.def'
QUESTEXE for the location of QUEST. E.g. 'setenv QUESTEXE /csd/bin/quest'
NETEXE for the location of Netscape. E.g. 'setenv NETEXE /usr/local/bin/netscape'
PLAHTM for setting the PLATON HTML menu tree to the root of a local copy (as opposed to over the internet).

E.g. 'setenv PLAHTM /http/platon/'
The full HELP-Tree is available From Here (Please Check regularly for updates).

Finally, check whether things work with sucrose.spf. with:

platon sucrose.spf

which should bring up the PLATON Main Selections Menu.

Click on CALC ALL

Three listing files are produced: 'sucrose.lis' (lineprinter format) ,a PostScipt version in A4-format sucrose.lps and a PDF version..

PLATON HOMEPAGE

Last change 13-Jan-2016. e-mail to Ton Spek