- You will not be able to compile or use WAVE unless you have installed XView, but none of the other WFDB applications requires XView. Other components of PhysioToolkit, such as SEMIA, require XView.
- At this time, it is necessary to use the XView binaries available here, which work only on PPC-based Macs. A package for Intel-based Macs may be available soon. Sources are available here, but compiling them under Mac OS X is not straightforward.
- The currently available version does not include the textedit
application, which is WAVE's default menu editor. This will not
prevent you from using WAVE, but you should set the EDITOR environment
variable to the pathname of your preferred text editor before running
WAVE if you plan to edit WAVE's menu file. For example, you might add
export EDITOR=/usr/bin/emacs
to the file named .bashrc in your home directory.
If you download the sources (recommended):
- If your web browser decompressed the archive (Safari does this), use this command to
unpack it:
tar xfv wfdb.tar
Otherwise, decompress and unpack with this command:tar xfvz wfdb.tar.gz
Unpacking the archive creates a directory with a name of the form wfdb-10.m.n.
- Enter this directory, configure, and install the package:
cd wfdb-10.m.n ./configure sudo make install
The sudo command prompts for your password, needed in order to install the package in subdirectories of /usr. If you do not have administrative permissions, you may install the package in any writable directory by running make directly, adding an appropriate option:make install WFDBROOT=/path/to/another/directory
Note that in this case you will need to add WFDBROOT/bin to your PATH, and WFDBROOT/lib to your DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH. - (Optional) Check that the WFDB library and applications have
been correctly compiled and installed:
make check
This step compiles a short program that exercises the WFDB library, prints a summary of test results, and prompts you to press <Enter>. After you have done so, the WFDB applications are tested. The tests are very short (typically less than a second each), except that the last one (xform using NETFILES) may take up to a minute if you have a slow or inoperative Internet connection. If any application test fails, its output can be found in the checkpkg subdirectory of the WFDB source tree; compare this output with the files of the same names that can be found in the checkpkg/expected subdirectory.
If you download the binaries (not recommended):
- Download the appropriate binary archive for your CPU type
(Intel or PPC). Unpacking the archive creates a directory with a name
of the form wfdb-10.m.n-cputype-Darwin. Copy its
contents into the same-named subdirectories of /usr:
cd wfdb-10.m.n-cputype-Darwin sudo cp -pr . /usr
- On Mac OS X 10.5 and later:
The X server starts automatically when needed, so simply run the command:wave -r mitdb/200 -a atr
- On earlier versions of Mac OS X:
Unless the X server is running already and an xterm window is open, run the command:startx &
In the xterm window, type the command:wave -r mitdb/200 -a atr
Note that WAVE's menus (marked with a 
) are opened using a right click; if you have a
one-button mouse, simulate a right click by pressing and holding the
apple key while clicking. Annotation editing requires the use of the
middle button, which can be simulated by using the option key while
clicking.
If you have not used WAVE before, you may want to follow through the tutorial
material in the beginning of the WAVE User's
Guide.
