readme.sparc

speech signal process tools

               Entropic Research Laboratory, Inc. 

          Unix Signal Processing Software Demonstration

INTRODUCTION
============

This demonstration software provides a brief introduction to
Entropic's signal processing software -- the Entropic Signal
Processing System (ESPS), and the waves+ graphics interface.

The demo has two parts: "waves+ intro" and "slide show". The waves+
intro is a live demo that shows the software in action. The slide show
is a sequence of fixed ESPS and waves+ images.  The demo has an
optional voice narrative that describes what you see on the screen.  
This option may not be supported on all systems (and it can be turned 
off even on systems that support it).  Note that the text of the
narrative is contained at the end of the file that is displayed 
when the "About this demo..." button is pressed.  (This file usually
is erldemos/edemo.about).  

SETTING UP THE DEMO
===================

The tape contains a single tar image: the directory "entropic".  This
can be loaded anywhere; root privileges are not required.  Extract the
directory with "tar xvf /dev/rst8".

By setting your umask to 022 ("umask 022") before reading the tar
tape, anyone may execute the demo, but this is not necessary for a
single user.  The demo only requires write permission in the directory
/tmp, so changing the modes on the files to global read-and-execute
permission only ("chmod -R 555 entropic") will not break the demo.

Requirements and recommendations are as follows:

	1) SPARC CPU running at least Sun OS 4.0.3 (must) 

	2) color display for "slide show" (must).  A color display is highly 
	   desirable for the "waves+ intro" portion, as many things will not 
	   work without one.  If the display is monochrome display, on 
	   some systems the spectrogram displays will come up with 
	   high-energy regions light instead of dark.  In this case, 
	   un-comment "#invert_dither 1" (remove the "#") in the 
	   ".wave_pro" file located in the directory erldemos/esps/lib/waves".

	3) 25 MB disk space (must) 

	4) 16 MB memory highly recommneded. You can try it with only 12 MB,
	   but the audio and slides may loose sync. With less than 12 MB,
	   things become sluggish and sometimes confusing; turn the audio off.

	5) X Windows (must have Sun OpenWindows 2.0) 

	6) swap space of at least 20 MB, preferably 30MB

A user must be standing in the "entropic" directory in order to run the demo. 
If you want to make it easy for anyone to run the demo, put a script in
/usr/local or /usr/local/bin that "cd"s to the "entropic" directory and 
runs ENTROPIC. 

RUNNING THE DEMO
=================

To start the demo, change into the entropic directory ("cd entropic")
and run the program ENTROPIC.  This will put up a command window from
which the user can operate the demo.  

The top part of the control panel has buttons that present information
about the demo, ESPS, waves+, and the Entropic Research Laboratory.

The bottom part of the control panel allows you to select various demo
and audio options. By using the check boxes, you can select the live
part, the slide show or both.  The "Single" and "Continuous" buttons
determine whether the "Start Demo" button runs the demo once or 
continuously.  The "Audio Output" buttons control the play back 
options.  Once the options have been selected, clicking on the 
"Start demo" button starts the demo.

If you are using a SPARCstation, the demo will sound much better if
you go to the trouble to hook up an external speaker, instead of using
the internal speaker.

For more information about the demo, see the file displayed 
when the "About this demo..." button is pressed.  (This file usually
is erldemos/edemo.about).

CONFIGURATION CONSIDERATIONS
============================

This demo has been tested on a SPARCstation running Sun OS 4.0.3 and
OpenWindows 2.0. Ideally, the CPU should have 16 MB of memory and
25-30 MB of swap space.  The demo will run on some systems with as
little as 12 MB of memory, but it can be slow.

The demo has been tested with the olwm window manager.  It should run
with any ICCCM compliant window manager, but, we have only tested
it under twm. Unless you are running Sun's X/News server, you must put
the XView fonts on your font path.  To do this do, move to the "xview"
directory and type:

	source setxview


Also, note that under twm, you must have the following line
in your .twmrc file:

	UsePPosition "on" # use program-specified size hints

(Without this statement, you must manually place windows as they
appear.)

In general, the performance of the demo varies as a function of the
system configuration and load (CPU speed, disk speed, available
memory, role of NFS, network traffic, swap space, other processes,
etc.).  Since there is no foolproof method of synchronizing speech
output with the actual appearance of particular windows; inadequate
system resources may result not just in a slower demo, but in a
confusing demo.

If the demo is not smooth, try running it without speech output, as it
is most reliable in this mode (it is also faster).  If there is
considerable trouble, some system adjustments may be necessary; see
the recommendations below.

If additional swap space is needed, the following procedure can be
used (by a super-user): First, create a swap file with mkfile(1).  For
example, to create a 25MB swap file called "swapfile" in /home:

	%mkfile -v 25M /home/swapfile

Then, add an entry in /etc/fstab:

	/home/swapfile  swap  swap rw  0 0 

Then reboot the system.  

For each loop through the demo, a log file is written in /tmp/erldemo.log.
Problems can often be tracked down by looking at this file.

A single run of the demo takes between 5 and 8 minutes, depending
on the system.  

For more information or for help, please contact us:

  Entropic Research Laboratory    Voice:     202-547-1420
  600 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E. 	  FAX:       [phone]
  Suite 202                       Internet:  [e-mail]
  Washington, D.C. 20003          uucp:	     ...uunet!epiwrl!esps-info
  USA

Particular contacts are:

	David Burton ([e-mail])
	Alan Parker ([e-mail])
	John Shore ([e-mail])         

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
================

The programs (except xloadimage and next_slide), data files, and text
files in this demo directory (and subdirectories) are the property of
Entropic Research Laboratory, Inc.  (Copyright (c) 1986-1990, Entropic
Speech, Inc.  and Entropic Research Laboratory, Inc.; All rights
reserved).  The demo may be freely distributed and used by prospective
customers to evaluate Entropic Software products, or by Sun
Microsystems employees to demonstrate the capabilities of workstations
and windowing software.

Xloadimage was originally written by Jim Frost Copyright (c) 1989,
1990.  Rod Johnson of Entropic modified xloadimage and wrote
next_slide in order to enhance the capabilities for showing a series
of slides.  Both xloadimage and next_slide are in the public domain.
If anyone wants copies of these, please contact us.

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(@(#)README.sparc	1.3 12/5/90)