June 5, 2000 INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS FOR SLIDA Copyright 2000 W. Q. Meeker SLIDA (Splus life data analysis) is a collection of Splus function for life or reliability data analysis. For examples of how to use SLIDA, see the file SLIDA.txt and the files in the echapter directory. SLIDA will work with any version of Splus after 4.0. If, however, you intend to use the SLIDA GUI, it is strongly recommended that you have a version of Splus 4.5, updated with the July 1998 service pack (or any subsequent release of Splus). I have had reports that the GUI does not work at all with Version 4.0 (but most of the commands should still work). The following describes a simple method for installing SLIDA on a single-user machine. For more details and a description of a method for multi-users machines, see the SLIDA documentation (SlidaGui.pdf). To install the SLIDA functions on Windows 95/98/NT: 1. Move the SLIDA.exe file to some location (like your Desktop) and double-click to execute the file. The WinZip self-extracting file will prompt you to ask if you can to change the default directory from C:\SLIDA. It is ok to change this, but the SLIDA home folder will then be different from that indicated in these instructions. 2. Create a copy of the Splus startup icon shortcut (right-click on and drag the Splus icon; release the right mouse button, and choose "copy"). Right click on the new icon and choose "properties" under "shortcut." Set S_PROJ on the "Target" command line (note: do this on the "Target" and not "Start in" command line) of this shortcut to read: "c:\Program Files\sp2000\cmd\splus.exe" S_PROJ="c:\SLIDA" where "c:\Program Files\sp2000\cmd\splus.exe" is the existing path to Splus 2000 and depends on the version of Splus and the option used when Splus 2000 was installed. Do not change the first part. Only add the S_PROJ="c:\SLIDA" to the end of the line. *****Make sure there is a space between before the S_PROJ="c:\SLIDA". After typing the S_PROJ="c:\SLIDA", click on "apply" and "Close." Then rename the new Splus icon to SplusSlida or something similar (right-click on the icon to get choices including rename). If you are still using Splus 4.5, substitute splus4.5 for sp2000. Of course, if you use other than the default location for Splus, you will have to provide the particular path that you have used. 3. Fire up Splus using the SplusSlida icon. To use the SLIDA for analyzing data, you can use either the command line or the GUI. a) To use the GUI, choose SLIDA from the menu bar. There are a number of built-in life data object with which to experiment with the GUI options. b) Otherwise, just enter the commands, as in the examples in the SLIDA.txt file or in the echapter??.q files in the c:\SLIDA\echapters folder. Here is a simple example: Splus> mleprobplot(fan.ld,dist="Weibull") 4. For many SLIDA applications it is useful to set the graphics so that a series of previous graphs is saved for comparison and selective printing. The option Options => Graphics Options and under Autopage, choose "every page" has been chosen as the SLIDA default, but you could change this. Some comments on using SLIDA (and S-Plus) on Windows. 1. If S-Plus seems to be hanging or taking too long to execute, you can type to break out of a command. 2. If graphics window becomes messed up, try the command refresh(). Alternatively, kill the graphics window (by clicking the x in the upper right-hand corner of the graphics window). A fresh graphics window will be started. 3. As you use Splus over a period of time, memory usage will build up, and it may be necessary (especially if you are only working with 32 MB of memory) to restart Splus. The command check.memory() will allow you to monitor this. If you can afford it, install more memory. I noticed a big improvement when going from 32MB to 64 MB. In extreme cases, Splus may hang and it may be necessary to reboot your machine. I do not know whether to blame this on Splus or Windows, but it is clear to me that when taxing the resources of Windows, operation can get a bit flaky. 4. If you want to use the SLIDA software from another Splus folder or shortcut, you need to execute the commented commands with explicit paths, as shown in the .First function in the c:\SLIDA\_data folder. The commands in this .First dynamically load the c:\SLIDA\gmle3\SLIDA1.obj and c:\SLIDA\gmle3\SLIDA2.obj files and attach the c:\SLIDA\gmle3\_data folder. One can also add these commands to a .First function in other Splus working folders). The following is an index of the files in the SLIDA folder. All files are ASCII, unless otherwise noted. 1. README.txt this file 2. SLIDAnotes.txt some instructions and example Splus commands and a brief description of some commands 3. gmle3 This subfolder contains SLIDA object code and other subdirectories containing the SLIDA functions. Users should not have to access the files in this folder directly. Included in this folder are: gmle3\SLIDA1.obj dyn.load object code file for basic SLIDA (built into Splus 4.5 and Splus 2000) gmle3\SLIDA2.obj dyn.load object code file for advanced SLIDA The SLIDA1.obj and SLIDA2.obj files are binary files. They should not be edited. 4. echapters This folder holds the files echapter1.q, echapter2.q, .... These files contain SLIDA commands for most of the examples in Meeker and Escobar (1998), Statistical Methods for Reliability Data, to be published John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Presently, files are given for all except Chapters 9, 12, and 22. 5. SLIDA_textdata This folder holds ASCII files containing raw data used in the examples. These files have a single header line and are suitable for reading in with read.table to make a data frame can be used as input to frame.to.ld to make the life data object directly. For convenience, most of the data sets have already been provided in the form of a .ld life data object or .rd recurrence data object. The echapter files contain, however, numerous examples to illustrate the use of frame.to.ld. I would welcome feedback and suggestions for improvement of these functions. I intend to continue development. Please feel free to call or send email if you have questions. The most up-to-date version of SLIDA can always be found at http://www.public.iastate.edu/~stat533/slida.html Please send email to wqmeeker@iastate.edu if you would like to be notified when new versions have been posted. Copies of the SLIDA software may be made for private, non-commercial purposes. For other purposes, contact the author at the address below. --------------------------------------- There is a continuing, sophisticated process for checking computations done with SLIDA. It is, of course, possible that bugs exist in the software. I will try to investigate and fix any problems that are reported to me. Because it is free, however, SLIDA comes with NO GUARANTEE OR WARRANTY, IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE. --------------------------------------- William Q. Meeker Department of Statistics Iowa State University Ames, IA 50011 wqmeeker@iastate.edu