Installing VisualText: The APPS folder

Installing VisualText is straightforward, with a download and self-executing installation program. But integral to using VisualText is the notion of an APPS folder or directory, in which you place all the analyzer projects.

So you'll need to manually create a folder, let's say D:\APPS on your Windows system. Then you can create analyzers and place them in this folder, or download TAIParse and the Rez resume analyzer from the Apps tab in the TAI website

http://www.textanalysis.com/Apps/apps.html

unzip them and place them in the Apps folder. By the way, I've just compiled the resume analyzer and placed that updated version, along with sample "DOIT" batch files, at

http://dev.textanalysis.com/Rez0_3_1.zip

The main issue is that you must use the Windows Control Panel (eg, System > Advanced > Environment Variables) to edit the APPS environment variable. The installation by default sets it to C:\APPS, but that won't be right for you as a rule, since Windows is moving user stuff away from the C: drive.

You should also check that TAI and VISUALTEXT environment variables are set to their defaults (C:\Program Files\TextAI\VisualText). An easy way to check the values is to bring up a DOS or Command Prompt window (in Vista it's at Start Button > Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt) and simply type the command

SET

followed by a newline. or SET APPS followed by newline to see the value of the APPS variable.

Note that after you reset an environment variable, you'll want to close and reopen the Command Prompt windows in order to see the new value. (APPS equal C:\APPS will stay that way till you close the window and open a new one).

Once the APPS variable is set right, you can use it inside an analyzer to access the file path that the analyzer is located in. For example, the following code

@CODE
"output.txt" << G("$apppath") << "\n";
@@CODE

should print out D:\APPS, or whatever you've set your APPS environment variable to.

One more note: when you invoke VisualText, you should go to File menu > Preferences, then set the Auto Comment Name to your name or initials, and set the Apps Directory to D:\APPS -- that is, your path to the APPS folder. These are settings you'll need to make "once only".

When you install a new VisualText version, you'll first need to uninstall the old one, and so will need to reset the APPS environment variable and the Preferences. Your File > Recent Analyzers list will also be wiped out, so you'll need to do File > Open Analyzer to get to your analyzers.

That's about it on this topic. Happy computing with VisualText!