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Installation - Windows

There are two ways to install MView.

Either method can be used by an ordinary user installing into their own account, or by a system administrator installing onto a computer with multiple users. It is assumed that Perl is already installed and on your PATH.

Installer script

The installer program should work on all systems, but is new and relatively experimental.

You unpack the archive into a destination folder and run the installer from there, following the instructions. You may have to edit PATH afterwards.

Explanation: the installer puts a small mview driver program into a folder on PATH so that it can be run easily by the user. The driver knows the location of the unpacked MView folder and starts the real MView program.

  1. Save the archive to somewhere under your home folder then uncompress and extract it (using an archiver like 7-Zip, as here):

     7z x mview-VERSION.zip

    This creates a sub-folder mview-VERSION containing all the files.

  2. Change to this folder.

  3. Run the command:

     perl install.pl

    and follow the instructions. You will be offered various places to install the driver script.

    If you know in advance the name of the folder you want to use for the driver script, you can supply it on the command line:

     perl install.pl drive:\folder\on\my\path

  4. If the installer couldn't find a sensible place to install the driver, it chooses C:\bin and you will have to add that to your PATH, then start a new command prompt.

Manual install

This works on all systems and is the most basic, but requires that you do a little editing.

You unpack the archive into a destination folder, edit the MView program by hand, then add the folder containing that program to PATH.

  1. Save the archive to your software area, for example, C:\Program Files, then uncompress and extract it (using an archiver like 7-Zip, as here):

     7z x mview-VERSION.zip

    This creates a sub-folder mview-VERSION containing all the files.

  2. Change to this folder.

  3. Edit the file bin\mview.

    Find the line:

     $MVIEW_HOME = "/path/to/mview/unpacked/folder";

    and change the path, in our example, to:

     $MVIEW_HOME = "C:\Program Files\mview-VERSION";

    Save the file.

  4. Finally, make sure that the bin folder containing the mview script (that you just edited) is on the user PATH, then start a new command prompt.

    In our example, you would append C:\Program Files\mview-VERSION\bin to the existing value of PATH, or replace any older MView path.

How to set PATH

The PATH environment variable is a list of ; (semi-colon) separated folders containing programs. When you type the name of a program at the command prompt, the system searches these folders, in order, until it finds the program and runs it (or complains if the program can't be found).

Assume you are adding C:\bin as the directory containing the newly installed mview script. On all systems the PATH environment variable would be extended by adding C:\bin to the existing PATH value using semi-colon delimiters as needed. You can prepend the new path (it will be searched first for commands), insert it somewhere in the middle, or append it at the back (it will be searched last).

How to change PATH on different editions of Windows (gleaned from the Internet):

  • Windows 10 and Windows 8

    • Search » System (Control Panel) » Advanced system settings » Environment Variables

  • Windows 7

    • Computer » Properties » Advanced system settings » Environment Variables

  • Windows Vista

    • My Computer » Properties » Advanced system settings » Environment Variables

  • Windows XP

    • Start » Control Panel » System » Advanced » Environment Variables

On all systems, once you've updated the PATH variable, open a new command prompt, then the mview command should be recognised, so that running:

mview -help

prints the help message for the new version.

Note: if you already have an older mview installed on the PATH and append the new location at the back of PATH, the older program will still be found first whenever you try to run mview, so be aware of that; you would need to delete the old version, or rearrange the PATH order.

Return to main README.