Compiling Mup for Windows/MS-DOS

Most Windows users will probably want to just use the pre-built binaries, However, if you want to build Mup yourself from source, download the Mup source package http://www.arkkra.com/ftp/pub/dos/mup71src.tar.gz and unpack it. A directory called "mup-7.1" should be created. Go to that directory.
cd mup-7.1

Compiling Mup using Watcom C

To compile with Watcom C you can use the included .bat files:

  cd mup
  makemup
  cd ..\mupdisp
  makemupd

Compiling Mup using Borland Turbo C++

It may be possible to compile Mup with the Borland Turbo C/C++ MS-DOS compiler, but because of memory limitations it runs rather slowly and can only handle a few pages of input. The use of extended character sets (for letters with diacritical marks, etc) is turned off to save memory. If you want to turn it back on, remove the #ifndef __TURBOC__ line above the #define EXTCHAR.

To compile using the Borland Turbo C/C++ compiler for MS-DOS:
tcc -A -w-rch -w-pia -mh -Yo -a -G- -O -emup *.c We never got mupdisp to compile with the Borland compiler; it just doesn't have enough memory.

A Mup user has reported successfully compiling Mup with Visual C++, but reported that the /J option was needed.

Compiling with gcc or other compilers

You can look at the included Unix-style makefile for ideas on how to compile with other compilers. Mup can be compiled using the gcc compiler from http://gcc.gnu.org and the mingw libraries from http://www.mingw.org. Typically you can build in the mup directory with something like

  gcc -o mup *.c -lm

  gcc -o mkmupfnt mkmupfnt.c

  i386-mingw32msvc-windres -i mupmate.rc -o icon.o
  g++ -o mupmate.exe -I../mup *.C -Wl,--subsystem,windows \
    -lfltk -lfltk_images -lfltk_jpeg -lfltk_png -lfltk_z \
    -lcomdlg32 -lgdi32 -luuid -lole32 -lws2_32

Installing Mup

Once Mup is compiled, copy it to c:\mup or whatever directory you choose. The directory needs to be in your PATH. If it is not in your PATH, edit your autoexec.bat file to add
;c:\dos (or whichever directory you used) to your PATH command, then reboot.

You will need a way to view the Mup PostScript output. If you already have some means of viewing PostScript files, you can use that. If not, probably the best option is to use Ghostscript, which is free. You can download it from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost, or http://www.ghostscript.com/. You can get it pre-compiled and ready to run, or as source code.

If you choose not to use either Mupmate or Mupdisp, you can view Mup output using a batch script something like this:
@echo off
rem *** arrange so Ghostscript can find its files.
rem *** You may need to adjust path to match
rem *** where Ghostscript files are on your system
set GS_LIB=c:\gs
rem *** run Mup, adjust path to where you put Mup
c:\dos\mup %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9 > mupxxx.tmp
rem *** run Ghostscript on the output of Mup.
rem *** adjust path to match where Ghostscript is on your system
if not errorlevel 1 c:\gs\gs mupxxx.tmp > mupgs.tmp
rem *** clean up temporary files
del mupxxx.tmp
del mupgs.tmp

There is a batch script called "mupprnt.bat" that can be used to print Mup files using Ghostscript. Edit the file if necessary, and copy it to a directory in your PATH.
copy mupprnt.bat c:\mup\mupprnt.bat

Getting Mup running for the first time

Once you get Mup to compile successfully, try running it on the sample input files (sample.mup and star.mup). Verify that the output you get matches the corresponding sample output files (sample.ps and star.ps). You will find differences in some of the numbers, comments, timestamp, filenames, etc, but otherwise, in general the PostScript output you get should be similar to the sample output files provided, and if you display them, the results should look pretty much identical.

If Mup fails to run properly on the sample files, first make sure you are not in a write-protected folder. If you are, try copying the file to a folder that isn't write protected, and run it from there. If it still fails to run properly on the sample files, perhaps either your system has uncovered a bug that we haven't seen yet or your machine has some incompatibility. You can turn on debugging, by running with the -dN option, where N is a bitmap of debugging flags, to help pinpoint where bugs may be. The Mup User's Guide explains the bits of the debugging flags. If you get stuck, you may contact us at

If you need to make any changes in order to get Mup to compile and run successfully, please let us know. If you find anything confusing, we'd like to know that too. We want Mup to be as solid, portable, useful, and easy to use as possible.

Also, please let us know if there are ways we can improve the Mup documentation.

If you receive messages beginning with "internal error" this usually indicates a program bug, so we'd like to know about them. An exception is when you get a message about being unable to allocate memory when there really isn't any memory left. If you get other internal errors, please send us a copy of an input file and any other information that may help us reproduce the problem, so we can try to fix it in the next Mup release.

Provide feedback (bugs reports, comments, suggestions, questions) to:

Arkkra Enterprises