Greenstone tutorial exercise

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Devised for Greenstone version: 2.60
Modified for Greenstone version: 2.74

Installing Greenstone

Installing Greenstone on a Windows system

There are various ways of getting Greenstone:

  1. From a UNESCO CD-ROM (version 2.70) (or FAO IMARK CD-ROM, but this is an earlier version 2.51)

    These CD-ROMs contain the Greenstone software, plus documented example collections, four language interfaces (English French Spanish Russian), the Export to CD-ROM package, the ImageMagick graphics package, the Java runtime environment, and an installer that installs all of these.

  1. From the IITE Digital Libraries in Education CD-ROM, or a Greenstone workshop CD-ROM

    In addition to all the above software, these CD-ROMs contain the tutorial exercises and a set of sample files to be used for these exercises. CD-ROMs with Greenstone version 2.62 or earlier also include the Greenstone Language Pack, which gives reader's interfaces in many languages (currently about 40). This has its own installer which you have to invoke separately, after you have installed Greenstone. CD-ROMs with version 2.70 or later now come with reader's interfaces in all available languages. Textual images have been removed from the interface; they are now done using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). The Greenstone Language Pack is no longer needed. Instead, these CD-ROMs come with the Classic Interface Pack, which contains the old text images for use with a backwards compatibility macro file.

    All these CD-ROMs contain the full Greenstone software, which allows you to view collections and build new ones. They are not the same as CD-ROMs that contain a pre-packaged Greenstone collection, which only allow you to view that collection.

  1. From http://www.greenstone.org

    Most people download the Windows distribution from http://www.greenstone.org, which contains the latest version of Greenstone. There are several optional modules that must be downloaded separately (to avoid a single massive download): documented example collections, the Export to CD-ROM package (Greenstone 2.70 and earlier), the Language Pack (Greenstone 2.62 and earlier) and Classic Interface Pack (Greenstone 2.63 and later). There is also the set of sample files used in these exercises. (To reduce the download size the documented example collections are distributed in unbuilt form and need to be built.)

    You need Java to run Greenstone. You might already have it; otherwise download it from http://java.sun.com. To work with image collections, you need ImageMagick (from http://www.imagemagick.org).

Most Greenstone CD-ROMs start the installation process as soon as they are inserted into the drive, assuming that the AutoPlay feature is enabled on your computer. If installation does not begin by itself, locate the file setup.exe and double click it to start the installation process. (On the IMARK CD-ROM this file resides in the folder software_tools → Greenstone). If you download Greenstone over the web, what you get is the installer—just double-click it.

If Greenstone has been installed on your computer before, you should completely remove the old version before installing a new one. (However, you need not remove any pre-packaged collections that you may have installed.) To do this, see Updating a Greenstone installation.

Here is what you need to do to install Greenstone. Older versions of the installer follow much the same sequence but use slightly different wording.

To invoke the Greenstone Reader's interface, go to the Greenstone Digital Library Software item under Programs on the Windows Start menu and select Greenstone Digital Library. To invoke the Librarian interface, go to the same item and select Greenstone Librarian Interface.

Installing ImageMagick on a Windows system

Once Greenstone has been installed, you should ensure that ImageMagick is installed on your computer if you wish to build any image collections. If you are installing from a Greenstone CD-ROM, you will be asked whether you want to install ImageMagick: say Yes. If you are not, you will need to download ImageMagick (from http://www.imagemagick.org). To install this program you must have Windows "Administrator" privileges. (If you do not have Windows Administrator privileges, the ImageMagick installer will give a cryptic error complaining that it failed to set a particular Windows registry value. If this happens you can continue your work with Greenstone, but you will not be able to build collections of images.)

The remaining steps are straightforward, and, as before, we recommend the default settings. Here is what you need to do.

Installing Ghostscript on a Windows system

If you wish to do advanced conversion of PDF and Postscript documents (as described in exercise Enhanced PDF handling), you will need to install Ghostscript. If you are installing from a Greenstone CD-ROM you will automatically be prompted for this; the procedure is analogous to that described above for ImageMagick. If not, you will need to download Ghostscript from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ (follow the link to the current stable release).

If you are not sure whether you will need Ghostscript or not, you might as well install it anyway—it will do no harm.

Copyright © 2005 2006 2007 by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, New Zealand
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.”