1. First, make sure your Macaulay2 emacs interface is set up. Place the
following lines into your .emacs file in your home directory. If this file
doesn't exist, create it.
(setq load-path
(append
'( "/usr/local/src/Macaulay2-0.9.8/share/emacs/site-lisp/" )
load-path
))
(load "M2-init.el" t)
; comment out the following line with an initial
; semicolon if you want to use your f12 key for
; something else
(global-set-key [ f12 ] 'M2)
This will make Macaulay work in Emacs and make saving results much easier
than in command line.
2. To start in command line, type 'M2' (without the quotes). If Macaulay2 has
been installed properly, then you should see a prompt such as this:
% M2
Macaulay 2, version 0.9.8
i1 :
3. To get help, open the browser and open the file ~/.Macaulay2/index.html to
see the help file. Or, you can go directly to
/usr/local/src/Macaulay2-0.9.8/share/doc/Macaulay2/Macaulay2/html/index.html
Click getting started', for a first Macaulay2 session, as well as how to use the Macaulay2 emacs interface.
Click Index on top of the page to see help topics.
4. At this point you should try something simple in Macaulay2, such as
R = QQ[a..d]
(a+b+c+d)^4
To exit Macaulay2, type one of: exit, end, or quit.
exit
5. The Macaulay2 application directory
If this is the first time that you have run a recent version of Macaulay2 from
your user account, Macaulay2 creates an "application directory" for Macaulay2 in
your home directory. That directory is named ".Macaulay2", The application
directory contains several useful files and directories:
init.m2 This file is run every time you start Macaulay2
code/ This directory is on your Macaulay2 path, so any .m2 files you put here
are easy to load in Macaulay2.
index.html This is the top page for the Macaulay2 html documentation. It
includes the Macaulay2 html distribution, together with any html files from
installed Macaulay2 packages.
encap/ A directory containing one subdirectory for each installed package. The
subdirectory houses the files for that package.
local/ A directory tree containing symbolic links to the files of each installed
package.
local/info/ A directory with links to the info files for each installed package.
You may wish to add this directory to the list of directories in your
environment variable INFOPATH.
After creating this directory, Macaulay2 never modifies init.m2 or the code
directory. The page index.html is rewritten each time M2 is started.
More information about Macaulay2 is available at
http://www.math.uiuc.edu/Macaulay2/.