We assume that you have obtained NCGB by following the directions in ``Getting NCAlgebra and NCGB'' in part I.
It is possible that your installation is complete and the full power of NCGB is at your fingertips. For the sake of those who are not so lucky we will go through the following sequence of Mathematica input and offer remedies if your session does not behave as expected. Begin by typing
<<NCGB.m
This will load in a bunch of files some of which were loaded in earlier, some of which are new. The last few lines should include something like
LinkObject[/home/ncalg/NC/NCGB/Binary/p9c, 1, 1]
If you see an error at this point you may need to edit the file SetNCPath.m. The Windows user might have to comment out the two lines
(* $NC$Binary$Dir$ = $NCDir$ <> "NCGB/Compile/debug/"; $NC$Binary$Name$ = "NCGB.exe"; *)
although we will try to do it for him or her. After editing and saving the file, restart Mathematica (or at least Stop the Kernel).
After <<NCGB.m executes correctly,
enter the following two commands.
SetMonomialOrder[ a, b ];
NCProcess[ { a**b + 1 }, 1, "TestFile" ];
The execution of these commands should create a file TestFile.tex, latex it, and display a dvi window (a window containing mathematical formulas). If you are in the Windows environment you will have to quit the dvi previewer program (yap) to continue your Mathematica session. The notebook will be locked up until you quit the dvi previewer.
If there is still a problem, then perhaps you do not have latex or a dvi previewer. If this is the case see Section 29. Another possibility is that NCGB doesn't know where ``latex'' or either ``xdvi'' or ``yap'' is. If you can find both of these programs you can edit the file homedirectory/NC/NCGB/MmaSource/NCGBPlatformSpecific.m to tell NCGB where they live. A windows user might have to change (or uncomment) the line
NCGBSetLatexCommand[ "c:\\texmf\\miktex\\bin\\latex.exe" ];
or
NCGBSetDviCommand["c:\\texmf\\miktex\\bin\\yap.Exe"];
Editing this file, restarting Mathematica, and executing the above commands should open a dvi file automatically as mentioned above.
The dvi output is beautiful and worth the effort of getting a latex/xdvi/yap distribution. Nevertheless, the unmotivated NCGB user may make use of the NCGB commands which do not use latex/dvi without the latex/xdvi/yap distribution. For example, you can compute noncommutative Groebner bases without the latex distribution.
For more detailed tests of your new NCGB installation see Chapter 30.