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10.1 GUI Installation

As xasy is written in the interactive scripting language Python/TK, it requires Python (http://www.python.org), the Python Imaging Library (http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/), and the tkinter package (included with sPython under Microsoft Windows) be installed. Fedora Core Linux users can either install tkinter with the command

yum install tkinter
or manually install the tkinter, tix, and tk packages.

Pictures are deconstructed into the PNG image format, which supports full alpha channel transparency. Under Microsoft Windows, this requires Python 2.5 (or 2.5.1) and the Python Imaging Library:

http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5.1/python-2.5.1.msi
http://effbot.org/downloads/PIL-1.1.6.win32-py2.5.exe.
On UNIX systems, place http://effbot.org/downloads/Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz in the Asymptote source directory, and type (as the root user):
tar -zxf Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz
cd Imaging-1.1.6
patch -p1 < ../patches/TkAlpha-Imaging-1.1.6.patch
python setup.py install

Alternatively, xasy can deconstruct pictures into the GIF image format (not recommended as this is very slow), using white as the transparent color. This requires the lines

import settings;
xformat="gif";
in the Asymptote configuration file (see configuration file), along with the ImageMagick (see convert) program.