Making a folder for these programs on Windows

First, you need to get into a "command window", like this:

In older versions of Windows, click Start, then Run (which might be under "Applications"), and in the box tell it to run "cmd". This starts up a command window. In newer versions of Windows, the sequence may be different, but one way or another, you need to run "cmd".

In a command window, you are always in some particular folder (the "current folder"), and the "prompt" at the lower left corner of the window tells you the name of that folder. You want to be in your user folder, a name like

	C:\Users\your_login_name

In older versions of windows, that is where you will be when you start a command window. But in later versions, you may be somewhere else, such as

	C:\WINDOWS\system32

In that case, you need to move into your user folder: type

	cd C:\Users\your_login_name

and hit the "Enter" ("Return") key. You always have to hit Enter after typing this or any other command, to make the computer do it.

Now that you are in your user folder, make a new folder under the current folder that you are in, to contain these files (suggested name "astro"): type

	mkdir astro

and hit the "Enter" ("Return") key. You always have to hit Enter after typing this or any other command, to make the computer do it.

Move into the astro folder: type

	cd astro

and hit "Enter". Take note of the folder you are now in, as shown by the "prompt" at the lower left corner of the window. You will need to know it later, when you unzip files.

Additional setup for starmap for Windows

If you are going to use the starmap program, you also need to do the following.

The output of starmap is PostScript commands that describes what lines, dots, text, etc. are to be printed and where, to form the map. But to actually display this map, you need a program that displays PostScript. It is recommended that you use the GSview program, which requires that you also have Ghostscript. If you do not already have the GSview and Ghostscript programs, you can download them free of charge. One place you can get them is at the website http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/AFPL/. As it says under the Windows section there, install Ghostscript by downloading and running the appropriate file, based on whether you have 32 or 64 bit Windows. Then download and run the file for GSview. You can also get these programs from http://www.ghostscript.com.
One of the files that you got when you unzipped is called "map.bat". You need to edit map.bat as follows. Use Notepad (not a word processor like Word) to do this. The last line in that file is:
```
	start cmd /C "c:\Program Files\Ghostgum\gsview\gsview64.exe" mapout.ps
```
When you downloaded GSview, one of the files it created was under Ghostgum\gsview like this, and had a name starting with "gsview" and ending with ".exe" like this. You need to find this file, and then, if its folder or name is different from what the line in map.bat says, alter that line to have the correct folder and file name.

Running these programs on Windows

First, you need to get into a "command window", like you did when setting this up:

Click Start, then Run, and in the box tell it to run "cmd". This starts up a command window. In a command window, you are always in some particular folder, and the "prompt" at the lower left tells you which one. You stored and unzipped the programs into the "astro" folder, which is under the current folder, so type the following to move into that folder:

	cd astro

and hit the "Enter" ("Return") key. You always have to hit Enter after typing this or any other command, to make the computer do it.

At this point you are ready to run any of the programs you have downloaded. At the link for each program there is a description of how to use the program. In each case you will type a command line and hit "Enter". If you want to change something and run it again, you can use the "up" arrow to bring back the previous command. Then use the left and right arrows to move back and forth, and backspace or delete to remove characters, and type new characters that you want, hitting the "insert" key if you want to insert them without overwriting later characters. Then hit Enter to run it.