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Analog CE 6.0: Starting to use analog on a Mac

Here is the really short summary:
  1. Edit analog.cfg
  2. Run analog
  3. Read Report.html
When you download the Mac version of analog, it should unpack itself. (If it doesn't, you might have to run StuffIt Expander on it). You should then find in the analog directory a configuration file called analog.cfg and the analog application itself, as well as the Readme, the Licence and a couple of other files. When you double-click on the analog icon, it will run in its own window, and produce an output file called Report.html. (For help in interpreting the output, see What the results mean.) The window will then close if there weren't any warning messages, or stay open for you to read them if there were.
You can configure analog by putting commands in the configuration file, analog.cfg. Although this is less familiar to Mac users than pressing buttons etc., it's really much simpler and more flexible when you get used to it. One command you will need straight away is 
LOGFILE logfilename    # to set where your logfile lives
The logfile must be stored locally -- analog won't use FTP or HTTP to fetch it from the internet. There's a sample logfile supplied with the program.

There are already some configuration commands to get you started in the configuration file, but there are lots of others available. You can find the most common ones in the section on basic commands later in the Readme, and you can read about all of them in the section on customising analog. There are also some sample configuration files in the examples folder.

Another way to start analog is to drag a logfile onto the analog icon, in which case analog will try to analyse it, or drag a configuration file onto the icon, in which case analog will use the commands in that configuration file. (Analog detects whether it's a configuration file or a logfile by whether it starts with "# " or not.) This enables you to create different reports without having two copies of the application.

There is another way to give options, via command line arguments. You'll see these mentioned in this Readme from time to time, but MacOS before MacOS X doesn't have a command line, so ignore these unless you've downloaded the Darwin version of analog.

If you want to compile your own version of analog (it's written in C), or just to read the source code, it's available from the analog home page. (It's the same source code for all versions).

Go to the Analog CE home page.

Stephen Turner
19 December 2004

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