Software Links

This page is an attempt to gather together links to documentation and supporting information on software available on Computer Science machines. Suggestions for new entries and other improvements are welcome and should be sent to Graham Gough.

These pages were constructed for the benefit of local users, therefore some links may not be available to browsers using machines outside Computer Science.

Please note that just because I maintain these pages does not mean that I have a detailed knowledge of all the software described here, let alone other software which is available in the school. In particular, the information here is very heavily biased towards Unix users as I personally very rarely use Microsoft software.

If you can't find information below regarding sources of advice on the topic in which you are interested, please try the local newsgroups such as man.cs.general or man.cs.os.linux for advice rather than mailing me directly.

Operating Systems | Languages | X windows | Graphics | Document preparation | Databases | Web info | Other software | Sources

General Information

• How do I find a piece of software to do x? This page gives a few general tips about looking for Unix software.
• Computing facilities in the Computer Science Dept. This is a general guide to the computing facilities available in the school, compiled by your friendly local system administration staff. Provides lots of useful survival tips, including answers to burning questions such as How do I read my University mail from home? These pages are well worth looking at; even old hands will find things that they didn't know about.
• Computer Science and Other Accounts. This document explains the relationships that exist between the various types of user account that are available to members of this school.
• Mozilla profile in use problem. This document explains how to recover from this common problem.
• Remote Access to CS machines using ssh. This document, written by Simon Ward, explains how to use machines in CS remotely.
• Stanford CS Education Library . A mine of useful material. Mostly C oriented but also some Perl and general Unix stuff.
• Compsoc . Not really a software related link, this takes you to the home page of Manchester University Computer Society (CompSoc).

Operating Systems

• Linux Links. This is a collection of links to information and software sources for Linux.
• Notes for the Introductory Unix Labs. Getting started with Unix.
• UNIXhelp for Users Helpful information for users of UNIX, developed at the University of Edinburgh
• The UNIX Programming FAQ. Answers to frequently-asked questions regarding programming in the Unix environment (not locally-generated).
• Solaris. Information for users of Solaris in Computer Science.

Programming languages and development tools

• Java.
• Perl.
• C.
• SML.
• Sicstus Prolog. Local copies of the Sicstus Prolog Users Manual, the latest version Release Notes. and FAQ.. These are local copies of documents from the Sicstus home site.
• Compilers available under Solaris. Official Sun documentation.
• Links to programming tutorial pages on the Web. This is not a local page, and I have no idea if any of these are at all useful; comments gratefully received.
• DDD. The home page of the Data Display Debugger, which has support for C, Java, Perl and Python. There is also a local mirror of the DDD documentation.
• Valgrind. Valgrind is a tool to help you find memory-management problems in your programs. When a program is run under Valgrind's supervision, all reads and writes of memory are checked, and calls to malloc/new/free/delete are intercepted.

The X window system

• The X window system. This site contains links to plenty of information about X related topics.
• A local file on the subject of X security. Info about running remote applications is available on this Mini-HOWTO.
• Running Exceed. How to run X utilities on a remote host and display on a W*nd*ws machine.

Graphics related software

• OpenGL. About the local OpenGL (Mesa) installation.
• GTK. A tutorial on how to use GTK (the GIMP Toolkit) through its C interface, together with example code. (Linux machines only)
• QT. Online reference material on the cross-platform C++ GUI application framework. (Linux machines only)
• Maverik. The home page for Gnu Maverik, a software system for supporting Virtual Reality applications, born and bred here in Manchester CS. Includes the Maverik FAQ.

  On Linux local machines only you can find the Maverik Programmers Guide and the Maverik Functional Specification.

Document preparation software

• The local TeX and LaTeX installation. Information on local differences and pointers to other documentation.
• FrameMaker. How to use FrameMaker 5.5 locally.
• Microsoft Office users who wish to be able to output PDF versions of their documents for web publication or other purposes can find a full version of Acrobat installed on tl001 through tl005 (in Windows of course).

Databases

• Oracle on-line documentation. Local copy of the full set of documentation for the Oracle range of Database products.
• An SQL tutorial. (Not local). Several other tutorials can be found by typing "SQL Tutorial" into Google.

Web related material

• The Mozilla Profile In Use Problem How to deal with a common problem encountered by Mozilla users.
• Local Web user's guide. What the Web user needs to know to survive here.
• The World Wide Web Security FAQ This document attempts to answer some of the most frequently asked questions relating to the security implications of running a Web server and using Web browsers.
• HTML Help. Material on a wide range of HTML related topics.
• W3Schools.com. Lots of tutorial material on a Web related matters.

Other software

• Mtools. Tools for handling MS-DOS floppies under Unix.
• Local News user's guide. A local guide to reading and posting news.
• Updating files on the teaching system. Information for teaching staff.
• The local Emacs installation. Information on local differences and pointers to other documentation.
• The Gnuplot FAQ. , the Manual and a useful tutorial.
• The a2ps home page. a2ps is a very useful anything to PostScript filter. Very useful for producing source code printouts; it's what produces the 2-up code listings used in the labprint system.
• Locally available text editors. A guide to some of the text editors available on the local Unix machines.
• The GNU Archive. There is a local mirror of the GNU Software Archive, from the Free Software Foundation, including documentation.

Software sources

This section is now looking a little thin and some of it is now probably a bit out of date. Contributions are welcome. Many sources can be found by following the links above for specific programming languages or operating systems, for example Linux Links.

• Software available from Manchester Computing.

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Queries regarding this page should be addressed to Graham Gough.