Gsharp Web Edition Configuration

The Gsharp Web Edition files will have been installed on your computer during installation, but before you can use Gsharp Web Edition you must configure your web server to work with it.

First a little background information on how the Gsharp Web Edition works:

Most files that are requested by a web server are sent as they are, but it is also possible to tell your web server that certain files should be executed first and the output sent back instead. These scripts can accept input using something called the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) and all the scripts are normally kept in a single directory called /cgi-bin/ 

When GsharpWE scripts run they produce HTML output just like any other script, but they can also produce GIF files which are stored in a directory on the web server and referenced from the HTML that the script creates.

In order to get GsharpWE and the examples up and running you will need to:

  • Tell your web server that .gsl files should be run by GsharpWE
  • Create a directory for temporary files which is part of your web server and that cgi-bin scripts have permission to write to
  • Add the GsharpWE example directory and the GsharpWE cgi-bin directory to your web server.
  • Set-up some environment variables specifying the names of the directories that you have used.

The exact syntax of how to perform these steps depend on which platform you are running on: