MAD 8 on Windows

MAD Home page

Latest update: 19-Feb-03 (a small bug fix to the version of 21-Jun-2002) , new version of MAD8 available, fixes some bugs, instructions below improved, including more set-up information on Windows 95, 98 (as well as NT, 2000, XP).  You are recommended to upgrade to the new version. 

January 2002: you can run MAD entirely within KEDIT and benefit from automatic syntax colouring for the MAD language.  

Installation Procedure

This is a procedure for installing your own copy of (the latest 8.51/15 or later ... ) MAD Version 8 for Windows.  This version of MAD8 should be identical to the Linux and Unix versions with the same version number currently available at CERN.  

 

It does not explain how to create input files for MAD nor the physics involved.  

 

MAD8 runs on 32-bit Windows systems (e.g. Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 98, ….).  

MAD8 should be installed on your hard disk for autonomy and performance reasons.  It uses very little disk space. The ZIP file is easily downloaded even over a slow connection or can easily fit on a diskette.

 

The manual installation described in the following may be superseded in due course as we hope to arrange for automatic centralised installation in CERN.  It is not very complicated but please follow the details carefully.  

 

Under Windows there are a number of possible ways to run a program like MAD.  The choice between them is partly a matter of taste and convenience.  However the "minimum" procedure described first is certainly not the most convenient: most users will prefer to set up file associations as described further down.

Minimum installation procedure (necessary in all cases)

  1. Download the zip file and open it  (with WinZip or a similar utility).  

  2. Extract the contents of the ZIP file to your PC’s folder "Program Files" folder.  Normally the following link will open it:

            C:\Program Files\

    If you already have a mad8 folder there (from a previous version), you should delete it.

  3. This should create a folder C:\Program Files\mad8 looking like something this:


     

  4. Then, to run MAD, you can create a shortcut to the mad8.bat  file in any convenient place (Desktop, SendTo … ) and drag MAD input files onto it.  However it is much better to set up proper file associations (see below).

That’s the necessary minimum you need.  This recipe should work for all 32-bit Windows systems (i.e., Windows 95 and later).

Terminal Sessions

You may like to start the MAD8 program directly, by double-clicking, say, the mad8.exe file’s icon in order to get a text-based terminal session in Unix  style.  

  1. You must first set an environment variable giving the location of the MAD8 "dictionary file".  In Windows NT, 2000, XP (we haven't checked for XP), ...  you can do this from the System icon in the Windows Control Panel.    Create a USER environment variable called DICT and give it the value 

    C:\Program Files\mad8\mad8.dic


    (The dialogue boxes shown above are for Windows 2000.  They are slightly different on NT.)
    For Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME (probably), you can set this variable by     adding the line

    SET DICT=C:\Progra~1\mad8\mad8.dic

    to your C:\autoexec.bat file. Reboot your PC for it to take effect (you can check by typing SET at an MS-DOS command prompt).

  2. Once you have decided on your shortcut to start terminal sessions you can right-click it to change the start-up directory to, say your "My Documents" folder:

    wpe1.jpg (52974 bytes)

  3. You can further customise the behaviour of terminal windows by clicking on the Window menu/Properties (top left hand corner of the terminal window).  You can then choose to have the settings applied to all future windows started from the same shortcut. This is highly desirable since the default window is rather small.   Here are my settings:

    wpe2.jpg (21532 bytes)
    wpe5.jpg (35588 bytes)

  4. This gives a nice big window with a scroll bar and the QuickEdit feature (right-click to copy or paste information in the terminal window; if something is selected it may beep when you try to type - hit "Esc").  

  5. Unix people should feel at home, except that they would nee a separated shortcut for starting up MAD8 in every folder where they might go to work.  To get real Unix behaviour, put the MAD8 program folder on your PATH environment variable and start it as a command in a generic command-prompt window ...

File associations, how to run MAD in the "usual" Windows style

The following procedure assumes that Microsoft Access has already been installed on your computer.  If that is not the case, the procedure is simpler (but is not detailed here). You will have to create a new filetype with the .mad extension. 

At least on Windows 2000, I have managed to break Microsoft Access’s hold on the .mad extension: in the Windows Explorer as follows. 

  1. First set up the DICT environment variable as described under "Terminal sessions" above.

  2. Go to Tools/Folder Options/FileTypes, find the MAD extension in the list, click Advanced, create a new action by browsing to the mad8dl.bat file to get:   


  3. I also changed the name of the “Open” action for clarity, in case I ever use the original Access type of file (probably a rare occurrence) and created a KEDIT action that is my default for MAD files:



    You can replace KEDIT with any other editor for plain text files that you use.  If you exchange files with Unix systems, it is better to set your editor to use the Unix line-end (LF-on ly) convention (rather than the CR-LF that is used by programs like Windows notepad).  In KEDIT this is accomplished with SET  

  4. You can also change the description of the file type from "Microsoft Access Module Shortcut" to "MAD input" and check the "Always show extension" box.  

  5. For easy visual identification of MAD files, change the icon of .mad files to the MAD8 icon in the MAD8 program folder.  All of this seems to work fine in practice.  With this setup, double-clicking a MAD file opens it in KEDIT, or you can run MAD on a file by right-clicking and then selecting MAD8 from the menu.  It should look something like this:



Expert - and very confident - users can accomplish all the above steps more quickly by downloading this registry file. Only execute this file if  you understand exactly what it does - we take no responsibility!!

MAD within KEDIT

It is also convenient to run MAD8 from within the KEDIT editor and see the output immediately.  The ZIP file contains some additional files to facilitate this.  Do the following: 

  1. Move or copy the files 

        mad.kex
        mad.kld     
        update.kex     

    from the  C:\Program Files\mad8 folder to your KEDIT User folder (usually C:\Program Files\KEDITW\User , a sub-folder of the folder where KEDIT is installed).  
  2. To switch on MAD syntax recognition for file extensions that usually indicate MAD files, add these lines (or similar) to your profile file for KEDIT (usually winprof.kex in the User folder):

    if initial() then do
    "set parser mad mad.kld"
    "set autocolor .mad mad"
    "set autocolor .mmad mad"
    "set autocolor .seq mad"
    "set autocolor .opt mad"
    "set autocolor .str mad"
    "set autocolor .mou mad"
    "set autocolor .tfs mad"
    end

    For further information see KEDIT's help for KEDIT language definition (KLD) files. 
  3. Having done this you can simply type "mad" on KEDIT's command line to run the contents of the current file through MAD and immediately view the terminal output in another KEDIT window.  If the file starts with the MAD command 
    ASSIGN,PRINT=TERM 
    then all the print output will be in the same file.  

Note that, to avoid saving the current file (which need not even have a name yet), a copy of its contents is saved in a temporary input file.  Unless you take steps to save them under different names, this temporary input and the corresponding output file will be overwritten each time you run MAD.

With the language definition feature, the MAD syntax is recognised and coloured helpfully.  Here are some screen images: 



MAD from Mathematica

It is possible to use the Mathematica Front End to capture MAD’s terminal output and send the input; this is rather like an enhanced terminal window. 

 

However I often run this version of MAD inside Mathematica functions.   I will explain this in more detail elsewhere but meanwhile here is an example in PDF format.

Graphics from MAD

As usual, the MAD graphics are created in a postscript file with the hard-wired file name mad.metafile.ps so unfortunately you cannot tell which input file it is associated with.  This file is overwritten each time MAD runs.

It is possible to view these with the Ghostview program ( that is also available for installation in the Windows 2000 Control Panel at CERN).  However it is much more convenient to install Acrobat.  Then the PS will automatically be converted to compact PDF files and you can work with them in Acrobat.

MAD input files

It seems that the Windows MAD will accept input files with either the Unix or DOS type format (line-end characters).  Personally, I edit MAD files with KEDIT, and have it set to save them in Unix format anyway.  Then I can use the same files on all systems with no changes. 

Uninstalling MAD8 

The following has not been tested:  Just delete the program installation directory mentioned above.  If you made file associations, you can follow the reverse of the procedure to create them above.  Or open the registry editor and search for "MAD8".  You should find something like

Delete the KEDIT, MAD8 etc keys and rename the MS Access key as just plain "Open" to put it back how it was.  You should probably also put back the Access icon.

You can also delete the key corresponding to the  DICT environment variable.

That should do the trick but this is all at your own risk.

Some notes on the batch file

Compared with the original SLAC/Daresbury version I have adjusted contents of mad8.bat as follows:

 

echo off

setlocal

 

rem  Batch file for launching MAD8, John Jowett, CERN 22/8/2001.

 

rem  This is a wrapper for the MAD8 executable which is necessary only because

rem  MAD8 does not accept input file names as command-line arguments.

rem  This could be changed in the Windows version but I decided to change the

rem  source code as little as possible to simplify maintenance.

 

rem  If you start the executable directly, with the DICT environment variable set to

rem  the path to the mad8.dic file, you will get a terminal session where

rem  you can just type commands.  You can also input a file by typing

rem     mad8 < filename

rem  at a command prompt.

 

rem  Derived from earlier version written at SLAC by Mark Woodley.

 

rem  Go to folder containing input file. where the MAD input file lives ... we'll execute

rem  from there

 

     pushd %~dp1

 

    @echo off

     set fname=%1

 

rem  set up a (local) environment variable with dict file location

 

     set DICT=C:\Progra~1\mad8\mad8.dic

 

        rem  Check that worked by uncommenting next two lines:

        rem  set

        rem  more < %dict%

 

rem  run MAD8, syntax here seems to be critical

     C:\Progra~1\mad8\mad8.exe<%fname%

 

rem  pause to look at terminal output

     pause

 

endlocal

popd

@echo on      

 

Programming Notes

MAD8 has been compiled using Compaq Visual Fortran Version 6.1.  Both MAD8 and MAD8DL can be built as two different projects in the same workspace (although almost every routine in the source code is different between the two versions).  There are only two source files that have to modified by hand to compile under Windows.  

Additional information

Some transparencies shown at the CERN SL AP group meeting 23/8/2001.  They include a performance comparison of MAD8 on different computers and operating systems.

 

JMJ (Please do not contact me with general questions about MAD Version 8, instead consult the main MAD8 Web pages.)

Last modified: 19-Feb-03