Allegro CL FAQ: 4.6: Allegro CL LITE and Allegro CL Trial

4.6: Allegro CL Trial

(The TRIAL edition, available at no cost for Windows, Linux, LinuxPPC, MacOS X, and FreeBSD, is a restricted version of Allegro CL. See the Franz Inc. home page (www.franz.com) for more information on the Trial version.)

Q 4.6-1) What about patches for an ACL Trial image?
Q 4.6-2) When I try to run Allegro CL Trial, it fails with the error "missing or invalid license file". Why?
Q 4.6-3) Why is there only one image with Trial (ANSI with the IDE)? How do I make other images?

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Q 4.6-1) What about patches for an ACL Trial image?

A 4.6-1) Patches work for the Trial image just like they do for all Allegro CL images. Just follow the instructions for getting patches and building patched images in introduction.htm.

Q 4.6-2) When I try to run Allegro CL Trial, it fails with the error "missing or invalid license file". Why?

A 4.6-2) The license file you received from the URL sent to you by email after you requested a Trial version must be saved to the file devel.lic in the Allegro directory. Because Windows tools for saving files are often mysterious (since they automatically do what Windows thinks you want to do), the file is often saved an devel.lic.txt or devel.lic.htm, rather than devel.lic. You can see there is a problem if you look at the file in the Windows Explorer and the type is shown to be anything other than LIC file. If the file has a type that is anything other than LIC, select the file in the Windows Explorer, right click and choose Rename from the menu that appears. Then type `devel.lic'. You may get a warning saying that changing a type often is destabilizing and asking if you really want to do it. Answer yes, you really do. (UNIX users rarely have this problem because file saving is more transparent on UNIX.)

Now you have a file whose name and type are devel.lic in the Allegro directory. If Allegro CL still will not start, the file is presumably invalid rather than missing. Look at it using a text editor (like Notepad in Windows and Emacs in UNIX). It should have a bunch of comment lines at the top (lines starting with `;;'), then a Lisp form starting `(:lisp' and including some encrypted text string, followed by a closing parenthesis. Finally, there is the comment line `;; END OF FILE'.

If there is additional material (such as HTML markers), remove them and save the file.

You can get a new license file by going to the Download section of the Franz Inc. web site and starting to download the Trial version again. Immediately after accepting the license agreement, a page appears explaining how to download. On that page, it tells you what to do if you have lost your license. Follow those instructions (being sure to specify the same email address used for the original download). A copy of your license file will be mailed to you.

Q 4.6-3) Why is there only one image with Trial (ANSI with the IDE)? How do I make other images?

A 4.6-3) To make the downloadable file as small as possible, we have only included one Allegro CL image, one that includes the IDE and is in International "ANSI" mode (case insensitive upper, as opposed to case sensitive lower of "Modern" images).

The other images which are commonly found in an Allegro CL installation are:

mlisp	Modern base Lisp image, international (16-bit characters)
alisp	ANSI base Lisp image, international (16-bit characters)
allegro	Modern IDE image, international (16-bit characters)
alisp8	ANSI base Lisp image, 8-bit characters (not available with trial)
mlisp8	Modern base Lisp image, 8-bit characters (not available with trial)

To build one of the available above images (the 8-bit images are unavailable), start up allegro-ansi.exe and evaluate one or more of the following forms in the Debug window:

  ;; mlisp:
  (progn
    (build-lisp-image "mlisp.dxl" :case-mode :case-sensitive-lower
                      :include-ide nil :restart-app-function nil)
    (sys:copy-file "sys:allegro-ansi.exe" "sys:mlisp.exe"))

  ;; alisp:
  (progn
    (build-lisp-image "alisp.dxl" :case-mode :case-insensitive-upper
                      :include-ide nil :restart-app-function nil)
    (sys:copy-file "sys:allegro-ansi.exe" "sys:alisp.exe"))

  ;; allegro:
  (progn
    (build-lisp-image "allegro.dxl" :case-mode :case-sensitive-lower)
    (sys:copy-file "sys:allegro-ansi.exe" "sys:allegro.exe"))

Evaluating any of the above forms does not add a menu item to the Start Menu. To run the resulting image, you will need to run the executable created in each form.

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