XNotesPlus offers Linux and other Unix users a complete Personal Information Managment system with a simple but full featured interface.

XNotesPlus is a Linux/Unix native application supporting GTK+, the same enviornment used by the GNOME Desktop. Recently joining Red Hat and other well known Linux distributions, HP and Sun Microsystems have now adopted both GNOME and GTK+ for their own desktops. And XNotesPlus integrates easily into all of these environments.

Installing the static GTK+ binary distribution:

A number of people have had problems installing XNotesPlus because they've grown accustomed to the "configure" way of installing from source.  Since I prefer using imake instead, I'll have to provide binary installations instead.

Installing the binary package is pretty straight forward.  Before we get started, just a couple of things you should be aware of:

1. The binary distribution is available for Linux only at this time.  I don't have access to other flavors of Unix so can't build the binary distributions for them yet.
2. XNotesPlus is an end user tool, designed to be run by individuals.  As such, it expects to find all of its data files (sound, Pilot, etc) under a specific directory.  During installation you will be asked where this directory should live.  If you want to make life easy for yourself, select $HOME/.xnotesplus, where $HOME is your home directory (ie the directory you are placed in when you first log in, such as /home/yourloginid).
3. Install the binary in a directory that is already in your PATH environment variable.  Since XNotesPlus is desinged for end users, you might find it convenient to install it into a directory such as $HOME/bin.  That way, you don't need to have root (ie priviledged) access to directories like /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin.  Of course, if you do install in $HOME/bin, then that directory needs to be in your PATH environment variable.  If it's not, you can add it with a command like this:


For sh, bash, or ksh users:

% PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin; export PATH
For csh users:
% setenv PATH $PATH:$HOME/bin


Note:  the % is a command line prompt.  You don't need to type it too.

In the following, the package name will be something like XNotesPlus-v3.4.0-Linux-gtk.tar.gz.  The version number and platform name may be different, however.

1. cd /tmp
2. mkdir /tmp/xnotes
3. copy the binary package into /tmp/xnotes
4. unpack the binary package:

% gzip -d <packagename>
Note:  After uncompressing with gzip, the package name will no longer have the ".gz" suffix.
% tar xvf <packagename>
This will create another directory called xnotes.
5. Run either graphical installer (recommended) or the installation script and follow the instructions there:


Graphical Installer:

% cd xnotes
% ./xninstall


Shell script:

% cd xnotes
% ./install

If you have problems with the install programs, let me know.  If you don't understand what the install programs are asking or doing, let me know so I can make it easier to understand.

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