Kleinian Groups Programs: Indra Version

I have tied all my many years' efforts at visualizing kleinian groups and deformation spaces into one monstrous FORTRAN program (broken into many units, but still monstrous). This program is probably a testimonial to bad programming, but there it is. Every time I wanted to see some new feature or phenomenon, I went into the source code and hacked away. The good news is that with the advent of g77 (GNU's free FORTRAN compiler) it is a bit easier for people to take a working copy of the program and make it work for them. Here are some instructions for doing that.

As with all freely available software on the web, I cannot guarantee this program will work for you or even not damage your system. Certainly, if you try to plot the limit set of a non-discrete group, you will fill up your hard drive. Use at your own risk!

First, I have to assume you have Unix (preferably LINUX), Gnu stuff like tar, gzip, g77, make, ghostscript. A big thank you to the community surrounding and supporting the "Free Software Foundation" for making all this available. I also assume that g77 is installed as the command f77. If not, just change the Makefile.

First download the source code given below as a gzipped tar file

kleinian.tar.gz

Here is what you do:

  1. First, do the old Netscape shift-click to get the tar.gz file somewhere onto your computer where you want to work.
  2. tar zxfv kleinian.tar.gz

    This will unload a bunch of FORTRAN files, a Makefile, such as it is, and a PostScript prologue for all the PostScript graphics produced by the FORTRAN programs. It now unloads all the data files used in making pictures connected with Indra's Pearls.

  3. Edit the Makefile (in the subdirectory src) to say where the executable should go (your own bin subdirectory) and the location of the current directory where the PostScript prologue is located.
  4. Say make install to build and install the program kleinian.
  5. You can then say kleinian to run the program interactively, which is a bit tedious without a manual. (Remember we all played "adventure" when we were younger for a serious educational reason.)
  6. Or you can take some of the scripts from the data directory in the distribution Indra/*-pix and then say

    kleinian < file.dat

    to produce the PostScript file.

  7. Note: if you want to keep the executable kleinian in the bin directory, you should change your path to refer to that directory. Or if you're in, for example, indra/symmetry-pix, you can run the program by ../../bin/kleinian < Hexes4.dat
  8. Then view the file by means of

    gv file.ps

    assuming you have Ghostview.

Good luck!

Let's hope there is a manual someday. Here is a brief overview of the program: kleinian

wrightd@math.okstate.edu
Last modified: Fri Jan 10 08:52:41 CST 2003