below, i've also included the steps i took to recompile, if it helps other
people.

thanks!
angi

(compilation done on an Intel dual-core running OS 10.4.11)

- Make sure X11, Xcode/Developer Tools are installed
- Install Fink, then use Fink Commander or command line tools to install
the tiff and openmotif libraries.
- Make sure Python2.4 is installed and accessible: under /usr/local/lib,
there should be a python2.4 subdirectory containing all the libraries and
under /usr/local/include, there should be a python2.4 subdirectory
containing all the header files
(If you used the full installer in mac.dmg.gz, it'll install Python2.4 to
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.4/. You can just copy the
include and lib files from there and put them in the appropriate place in
/usr/local. Note that you'll need root access to do this, i.e. 'sudo')

- Download all the source .tgz files from the Ribbons website
- Untar everything
- Create your main ribbons directory (I put mine at /Applications/Ribbons)
... I'll call this <ribbons> from now on
- Move all the subdirectories under rib_srcx to <ribbons>
- Move all the subdirectories under rib_boas to <ribbons>
- Move all the subdirectories under rib_srcu EXCEPT 'install' to <ribbons>
(it's the same as the one under rib_srcx,  so you don't need it)
- Move the test directory to <ribbons>
(At this point, your main ribbons directory should have a bunch of
subdirectories)

- Start X11 Terminal (or just regular Apple Terminal)
- %> cd <ribbons>
- %> cd install
- %> configure : you should not get any errors and there should be
messages saying it found all the libraries (except Fortran, but that's ok)
and Python2.4.
- %> make clobber
- %> make
- %> make install
- Note that you will get some errors complaining it can't find g77 (the
Fortran compiler) but that's ok:
make[2]: g77: Command not found
make[2]: [msmain.o] Error 127 (ignored)
make[2]: g77: Command not found
make[2]: [msfunc.o] Error 127 (ignored)
make[2]: g77: Command not found
make[2]: [ms] Error 127 (ignored)
strip: can't open file: /Users/limadmin/Desktop/ribbons_src/ms/ms (No such
file or directory)
make[1]: [install] Error 1 (ignored)
mv: rename ms to ../bin/ms: No such file or directory
make[1]: [install] Error 1 (ignored)
ls: ms: No such file or directory
make[1]: [install] Error 1 (ignored)

- At this point, you should a bunch of executable programs in your
<ribbons>/bin directory
- To test it, cd into your <ribbons>/bin and try running ribbons. It
should complain that it can't find PDB files

- Now to be able to call the program from any directory, you just need to
make sure the <ribbons>/bin and <ribbons>/boas subdirectories are in your
PATH. I would edit your .bashrc or .cshrc files to do so.