Installation
RainPro is shipped as an APL workspace containing a large number of sample functions, and two namelists which itemise everything that you will need in order to use it from your application. A standard Windows help file is also enclosed, containing an on-line version of this manual. Simply copy the workspace to your normal development directory, and place the help file wherever you find convenient.

To access the workspace, )load it in the usual way. You will be able to try a selection of examples immediately. To access the help file, double-click it in Explorer or add a desktop shortcut which starts it for you.

Learning by example!
By far the best way to learn RainPro is to copy and modify the examples! When you load the workspace, you will be directed to a selection of variables (such as Help) which simply list the examples for you so that you can take the cursor to the line of your choice, and <Enter>. All the sample functions place the finished chart in the variable PG, so all you need to do to see the result on screen is View PG. Experiment with ‘zoom-in’ using the left mouse button (drag a rectangle across the area you want to magnify), and try out the right-mouse menu for printing options. See Using the Chart Viewer for more detail.

If you need help on the terms used throughout Rain, the glossary illustrates many of the concepts.

Building RainPro into your Applications
When you are comfortable with the basics, you will want to use the graphics in your own GUI application. All the functions you will call directly are prefixed ch and internal functions are prefixed CH‘; the PostScript names are similarly standardised as psXxx (as in psView) and ps_ for internal calls. All the functions and variables are listed into a pair of variables chnl and psnl in the rainpro workspace. You can copy these into your application and subsequently use them as the left argument to ŒCOPY. You can remove them when they are not in use with ŒEX, and you might like to keep the decommented code on a component file and pull this into your application only when required.

)xload myapp
SAVED xx/xx/xx etc
)copy rainpro chnl psnl
SAVED 11/07/1996 19:57:02
chnl Œcopy 'rainpro'
psnl Œcopy 'rainpro'

This allows you to make your plot in myapp, as a simple character vector of PostScript code, with any name you choose. To include the charts in your APL application, you can render the chart on any Windows control which supports the Draw method. See the technical note on Using Rain from the Raw APL Gui for full details.

Note that Rain is a language, and is intended for APL programmers, not end-users! If you want to build a friendly front-end with colourful toolbars and pull-down choices, that is fine, but please acknowledge the use of RainPro in the ‘About’ box for your finished application.