Download the ECCO Simulator
Download Latest Stable Version of ECCO Software at sourceforge.net
The ECCO Model simulator available on this site offers a quick and easy way for visitors to play with the model. However, using it requires an active internet connection, not something that every user will wish to maintain all the time!
As an alternative, the simulator code can be downloaded and run offline, from my open-source software repository at sourceforge.net. Two offline modes of operation are available:
Offline Web Mode The user runs the model from within a web browser, as with this web site, but the required files are stored on the local machine filesystem rather than the internet. This is quick and easy, and requires no extra software on your machine, nor technical expertise on your part.
Application Mode The user runs the model as a regular desktop application, launched from the command line or your file explorer/chooser/manager of choice. This requires that you have a Java Runtime Environment (and possibly a Java Development Kit) installed on your machine and generally accessible. You may or may not be able to use the same one that your web browser uses to render applets. At present, the application mode cannot do anything that the offline applet can't, but there are plans afoot to extend its capabilities in ways that applets can't. Stay tuned, and visit the developers' page!
There is only one download package available at present, which can run the simulator either as an application or as an offline webpage applet. The same download will install the necessary on Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, UNIX/Linux systems and BeOS (and in principle any other OS that has a supported java runtime and an ability to handle zip files).
The software is freely available under the GNU public license, and is in active development. Visit the developers' page for details or to get involved. Some brief installation instructions are given below. The code is likely to change and improve a lot in the coming months, so please keep coming back to the site every now and then to check for new releases. We will hopefully be setting up an automatic mailing list soon to cover releases of new announcements, technical support, etc.
Installation: General
The principle is the same on any computer. You will download a zip file, and unzip it into a directory of your choice, making sure that the 'internal folder' structure of the zip file is correct. To activate the web page mode, you then need only visit the page called 'ecco.html' in your usual web browser. To activate in application mode, open a console window, navigate to the install directory and type in a few instructions, or else create a script/batch file to help you. In either case, you can create desktop icons etc. as suits you to ease the launching of the program in future to a single mouse-click.
If you've genuinely followed these instructions and run across problems, do let us know. We want it to work for you. Please bear in mind that this is a free service, don't expect an immediate reply. As mentioned above, we are looking into the possibility of organised mailing lists to allow the user base to help each other and keep everyone informed.
The above procedure is translated into the specifics for computer systems I'm familiar with.
Installation: Windows
Microsoft Windows is the most commonly-used desktop OS at present, so I'll deal with it first. Should be broadly similar under Windows95, 98, NT, Me, 2000, XP or anything else!
Download the zip file from the link above, and save it somewhere (e.g. c:\downloads\ecco\ecco_latest.zip)
Open the file usimg a Zip utility program - WinZip is a commonly used utility, available as 'shareware' - please pay them if you do get hold of it and start using it regularly. You might alternatively look at tucows for 'freeware' zip programs. Anyway, unzip the contents of the downloaded file using your preferred application making sure you select the 'use folder names' option. When asked where to unzip to, choose somewhere memorable, e.g. c:\eccomodel\. Once unzipped, you should have created a whole lot of subfolders such as c:\eccomodel\codebase, c:\eccomodel\html and so on.
To start in web page mode find the file c:\eccomodel\html\offline.html using the Windows Explorer and double-click on it. This should open your web browser and display a page containing the model.
[OPTIONAL - a BIT MORE TECHNICAL]
In any case, if you need to get a java runtime, the best port of call is Sun Microsystems web site. Be warned, downloads are quite large, you might like to buy the CD or check on the CDs of popular computing magazines, which put the sun java runtimes (also JRE) or development kits (JDK) on periodically. Follow the instructions to set it up and configure it. Add the 'c:\eccomodel\codebase' directory to the classpath listing, and the java 'bin' directory to your application path.
To run straight from the DOS prompt, open a DOS window, cd to the codebase directory and type in the following:
> cd c:\eccomodel\codebase
> java ulu.sim.dyn.DynPanel ulu.sim.dyn.ukjun01
The DynPanel class is the graphical interface to the model. The second argument is the name of the compiled model class (ukjun01 is the June 2001 build of the UK model).To make a nice clickable icon, open up Notepad or other text editor, and type the above code into that. Save the file as ecco.bat. Double-clicking on this file in file explorer (or on your desktop) should then start up the simulator.
Installation: Linux & UNIX
Linux is an Operating System for a range of computing hardware, including the Intel/AMD x86 processors used to run Windows Operating Systems. Linux is a free operating system that can be either downloaded from the internet or bought for a modest price (around £30 UK) from a range of vendors alongside a printed manual and some installation support. These distributions will include many useful extra applications, typically full replacements for Microsoft Office, graphics programs and much else. A very worthy alternative to Microsoft's platform, getting easier to use as a desktop system by the month, and now quite easy to install alongside Windows too. More information at linux.com.
On with the install!
Download from the link above and save to a temporary place (say /tmp/ecco_latest.zip).
No need to download zip file replacements. Unzip to a directory of your choice on the command line or using a GUI utility. I'll stick with the command line here as it will work for everyone.
> mkdir eccomodel
> cd eccomodel
> unzip /tmp/ecco_latest.zip
Again, check that you have created all the subdirectories - mot unix zip utilities do this by default these days.As above, visit the local web page ~/eccomodel/html/offline.html with a web browser to start the web page in a java-enabled browser. I haven't tested this out much, as I generally use it in app mode on Linux, and use Opera for my web browsing (no jvm yet)
To start in app mode, make sure that ~/eccomodel/codebase is in your classpath. Add the following to your .bashrc file:
CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:~/eccomodel/codebase
export CLASSPATH
Then start up the model from the java runtime, as follows:
> cd ~/eccomodel
> java ulu.sim.dyn.DynPanel ulu.sim.dyn.ukecco
and watch the gui start upAdd desktop links to your start bars, menus, wharfs, dock-panels, desktop, whatever your window-manager supports. I use WindowMaker or KDE, for what its worth.
Installation: Other Operating Systems
Java promises 'write once, run anywhere'. If your system supports a java runtime and you can read zip files, this should work for you.
I have no special expertise to offer here, I'm afraid. Follow the general instructions and see what works for you. Do let me know of your successes and failures and I'll do what I can to help, and put any useful information up here.