Licensed Ribbons Software SGI Executables

Last update: Sep 22, 2006

Important Notes:

Latest release: ribbons 3.32 (Sep 22, 2006)

There are currently no plans to continue upgrades for SGI.
Hope to get someone with a new Prizm machine to build a version...

For the 'ribbons-data' or 'pov-image' GUI (see info on POVray for SGI at end of the page), you must get/install Python 2.4: www.python.org

Python should be simple to install, if you have a C compiler.
If you can't, you can't use the new and improved ribbons-data. You should just use the earlier Tcl/Tk version (!! but see note at the end!!)

You must have the required files of the Base Distribution, plus binary archive(s) above. You can unpack with the base distribution's *.csh script, or just (from RIBBONS_HOME), eg: 

 gunzip rib_sgi65.tgz 
 tar xvf rib_sgi65.tar 
 zcat rib_grasp.tar.Z | tar xvf -

Ray tracing with POVray

The main POV site is Persistence Of Vision
I currently run version 3.6 under linux or windows.
You will need to get their distribution and "/include" subdirectories if you plan to do anything fancy. Got their Unix version and built for my SGI machine to run under X. (a little painful without the linux-based tools.) Pretty sure I'm allowed to redistribute this by their license.

Important note if you can't use Python:

Pre 3.3 versions: Tcl/Tk on SGI

You must get/install Tcl/Tk version 8.0 or higher. (it's an old one by default on your sgi). This is the one I got (that worked on sgi,dec,mac - was already on linux): www.scriptics.com/software/tcltk/8.0.html

Then, after the simple: 

  configure; make; make install
you have to make sure that the new one is in your path (type 'which wish'). 'ribbons-data' expects the executable to be in '/usr/bin', so as root: 
 cd /usr/bin;  ln -s /wherever/it/is/wish wish