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.platonsoft.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).

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.

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 12-Feb-2020. e-mail to Ton Spek