The real introduction to the software is in the user manual that comes with the software. It will tell you that you should probably read Lívia Markóczy and Jeff Goldberg's paper in the Journal of Management, Volume 21, number 2, pages (305 to 333) title "A method for eliciting and comparing causal maps" to find out if the software does anything remotely like what you would like it to do. Many people have been disappointed because that software doesn't apply to their task. I am starting a list of pointers to other cause mapping software.
The software performs the cause map analysis tasks described in that paper, and that analysis depends highly on how the maps are elicited. Feel free to download and install the software, but before your hopes are raised to high about what it can do for you, you should read the paper.
For questions or comments about the paper please get in touch with either of the authors: Lívia Markóczy or Jeff Goldberg, and for comments or questions about the software it is probably best to get in touch with Jeff Goldberg.
This is for the distrat/askmap package of programs for analysis of causal maps. It is distributed freely and without warranty under the terms of the General Public License version 2 (or later)
drdist.zip is nearly 1Mb.
All of these files except for the readme file should be transfered in binary mode. Your web browswer will take care of that for you. to be transfered in binary mode. If you are using ftp, make sure to specify the type as binary for all transfers involving compressed files.
Use either unzip (InfoZip) or PKunzip to extract from the archive. If you use PKunzip then make sure to use the -d option for creating subdirectories.
Assuming that you will use the unzip provided and that everything is on a floppy in drive "a:" and that you wish to install things on "c:" drive, do the following:
c: cd \ a:unzip a:drdist.zipThis will build a directory C:\distrat which in turn has three subdirectories. Go into the directory and read C:\distrat\doc\install.dos. Or see about printing the complete documentation below.
If you use unzip on something other than DOS, be sure to use the -a option so that the ASCII files are unziped in ASCII mode with newline properly translated.
gzip is available by ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu A free version of tar is also available from the same source. The versions of gzip and tar included here are covered by the GNU General Public License agreement and you have the right not only to the executables I have included above but to the sources.
tar also exists on every Unix machine, and on most other mutliuser systems. It is possible to gunzip and un-tar the files on such a machine and then transfer the files to their final destination if that destination does not have the suitable programs.
With a version of tar that knows about gzip files: use
tar -zxvf file.tar.gz
or
tar -zxvf file.tgz
to extract the files from the gzip'ed archive. Such a version
of tar may be called gtar on some systems. On DOS tar will
not be able to call gunzip from tar..
If your tar does not understand such things (such as tradition
versions of tar or on DOS), you will need to first gunzip the files
and then extract with tar. One way of doing this is
gunzip file.tar.gz
or
gunzip file.tgz
which will leave you with a file called "file.tar".
If you have gzip but not gunzip, use "gzip -d" in place of "gunzip".
They are the same thing.
Then
tar -xvf file.tar
DOS executables for unzip.exe, gunzip.exe, and tar.exe should be near by this file in the archive. They are in /public/cc/cc047/tools/
Please direct questions to Jeff Goldberg <J.Goldberg@Cranfield.a.uk>
(I use "/" as the directory separator below)
There is a largely complete rewrite of the documentation in a much more coherent form than in the individuals .txt files in the doc directory. The new documentation is in four forms:
Since I have received few requests for the software from North America, these documents are produced for A4 paper. North Americans can still print them out on letter paper, but the margins will be funny.
To print these out you need to determine three (and slightly more) things:
Do NOT try to load either the .hp or .ps file into some sort of text processor or run them through a printer driver. They are already prepared to go straight to a printer without the intervention of any software. That is, the files are already in exactly the form that printers expect information to be in.
If you have a PCL printer on lpt1, then get to a DOS prompt and go
into the distrat/doc directory, then issue the command
C:> copy/b drdoc.hp lpt1:
Note the "/b"; it is needed
If you have a PostScript printer (preferred) on, say, lpt2: then copy
the PostScript file directly to the printer
C:> copy drdoc.ps lpt2:
(Note that here is there is no "/b")
Depending on how your system is designed to talk to the printer, you may get an error message every few pages (depending on the size of the printer's memory). Keep hitting "retry" when prompted to. If this doesn't work, please ask someone local for help.
If you have a PostScript printer (or print queue) called "fred_ps",
then just use:
% lpr -Pfred_ps drdoc.ps
If you have a PCL printer (or queue) called "fred_laser",
% lpr -Pfred_laser drdoc.ps
If you have problems printing these, take the files, and a printed
out version of this "readme.txt" file to someone who knows your
system for more help. If that person needs to contact me with
more questions they should feel free. I may be able to help
you remotely, but too much of how to print is specific to how
your system is set up.