ACT-R application for Windows

[Daniel J Bothell]

    There is a new ACT-R application available from our web page
(under the Education link).  It is a stand alone application that 
runs ACT-R and the ACT-R Scripting Extensions under Windows, 
without the need to load ACT-R into a LISP application.  The readme 
file is included below.

NOTE:  If you have an older version of this application it is
strongly recommended that you delete it, and get the new version.


=================== Readme.txt =============================
This is a stand alone version of plain ACT-R for Windows.
This is not the ACT-R Environment, just ACT-R and the
ACT-R scripting extensions running in a listener without
the need for ACL.  It will run the tutorial projects,
but does not provide any of the inspection windows 
described in the tutorial.  However, all of the 
functionality of those windows is available from the 
command line.  The manual is available from our web
page: http://act.psy.cmu.edu .
 
It was built with ACL 5.0 Runtime so it does not include
the following ACL 5.0 features (taken from the ACL 
Runtime documentation):

cross referencer 
profiler
stepper
disassembler
excl:dumplisp 
compiler (compile and compile-file) 
:help, :history, and redo top-level commands 

This was basically made as a test prior to production of 
the stand alone version of the environment, and made 
avaiable because some people may find it useful.  

After the setup program runs there will be an Act-r menu
in the programs group of the start menu (or in the menu
you specified if you did not accept the default), and a
shortcut placed on the desktop.  Either of these can be
used to run plain ACT-R.  You can also run the 
"plain ACT-R.exe" program directly. 

To uninstall plain ACT-R use Add/Remove Programs in the
Windows control panel.

If you have been using a previous version that did not 
have a setup program to run you should delete it, and 
run this one.  It turns out that a couple of the .dll's 
Allegro needs may already be installed in the system 
folder on your machine, and having copies in the folder 
where the file is run can cause problems (see below).  
The setup program takes care of that.

If you have any questions or problems with this program
send mail to Dan Bothell (db30 at andrew.cmu.edu).

If you would like to be informed of updates to this and
other ACT-R programs you should subscribe to the ACT-R
mailing list.  The directions are available on our web
page as well as below.  There is also an archive of the
mailing list available on our web page, if you would 
like to see the past discussions.


==============================================

>From our web page (http://act.psy.cmu.edu the ACT-R 
Mailing List link):

ACT-R Users Mailing List

The act-r-users mailing list was created to disseminate 
information among users of the ACT-R production system. 
Users can ask questions, exchange tips, discuss issues 
and share all relevant information by sending mail to: 

act-r-users+ at andrew.cmu.edu


Messages to that address are automatically forwarded to 
all subscribers.  To subscribe to the list, report bugs, 
or any other purpose which requires the direct 
involvement of the maintainer and is not of direct 
interest to all users, send mail to: 

act-r-users-request+ at andrew.cmu.edu

===============================================

>From the Franz FAQ (http://www.franz.com under the 
support link):

The directory created by generate-application also 
contains the system DLLs msvcrt.dll and mfc42.dll, 
user32.dll (if you use CLIM), and possibly others. These 
files, if present in both the Windows 'system' directory 
and the application directory can cause subtle failures.

...

If mfc42.dll is duplicated, when the user closes the 
application, the application will appear to exit but then 
an error will be signaled (on Windows NT) and perhaps a 
machine crash on Windows 95/98.