System Requirements

The following software must be installed separately, it is not included with the Sock download.

• Sock is delivered as a zip file: you will need a utility to unpack this, such as WinZip.
• a Java run time environment.  Sock has been tested with SUN's Java compiler and VM, using version 1.3 on Windows 2000.  It should run under equivalent or later versions on other platforms.  For Sun's JRE see http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/index.html.
• A browser which supports the 'onDragStart' event attribute.  This is only required by one feature of Sock:  it allows your editor to be controlled from the browser window.  Currently this means Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5 or later on Windows platforms only, which you can download from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp?
• A text or XML editor.  To use the browser to control the editor this should be one which can be instructed to open a file at a specific line either from Java or the command line.  See Installation for details of how to configure Sock to call your editor.  Two editors we have used successfully with Sock are:
  • EditPlus, http://www.editplus.com/.  This one is nice because it lets you view the HTML generated from Sock within an editor window - one less button on the task bar.
  • Programmer's File Editor, http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe/, or type the name into any good search engine.
• Memory and processor requirements for Sock will depend on the specification being processed.  As an example, one specification of approxiamately 7000 lines (250Kbytes) takes around 10 seconds on an 800MHz pentium, and uses 30Mb of RAM.  We recommended system memory is at least 128Mb.

Next