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README_WINDOWS.md

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Supercollider 3.6 for Windows

This is the Windows version of James McCartney's SuperCollider synthesis engine (scsynth) and programming language (sclang). Supercollider's main homepage is at http://supercollider.github.com

There is a lot of useful information and tutorials in the SuperCollider documentation which you can access online at http://doc.sccode.org

To get further information on SuperCollider usage or development, you should subscribe to the mailing lists: http://www.beast.bham.ac.uk/research/sc_mailing_lists.shtml

System Requirements

Operating System

  • Windows 8
  • Windows 7
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows XP
  • Windows 2000

Sound card

Most common sound cards will work fine - the sound card should be one that is supported by PortAudio (http://www.portaudio.com). If you have issues with latency, consult http://www.portaudio.com/docs/latency.html for advice on how to tune your operating system to achieve the best results (in short: use ASIO drivers wherever possible).

Installation

Simply run the installer, and choose a path where all the application files will be unpacked.

After installation, you can use SuperCollider in two ways, described below:

  • Using the provided SuperCollider IDE (recommended)
  • In command line mode

NOTE: Location of extensions and configuration files has changed in 3.6.1. If you want to keep those from previous versions, please read the section about changed locations below.

Using the SuperCollider IDE

To start up the IDE use the Startmenu link or run the scide.exe program found within the installation folder.

You can get more help on using the IDE via the Help menu.

On first startup expect several firewall warnings to pop up. The SuperCollider components communicate through the network, so you will get a warning for each oc scide, sclang, scsynth and - if available - supernova.

Using SuperCollider in command line mode

  1. Open a Windows command line window (the cmd.exe program).

  2. Navigate to the SuperCollider installation folder.

  3. Start up the sclang.exe program, to enter the SuperCollider command line.

  4. You can now type SuperCollider code and evaluate it by pressing the Enter (Return) key. You can browse the previous commands using the up and down arrow keys.

  5. These are the handy keyboard shortcuts:

  • Ctrl+T: equivalent to CmdPeriod.run
  • Ctrl+X: to recompile the class library
  • Ctrl+D: to quit the SuperCollider command line

Quarks

Quarks are an community driven extensions system for SuperCollider. On OSX and Linux, SC provides a GUI to download and update Quarks. It is started by evaluating Quarks.gui. This GUI cannot be used on Windows though. You need to download Quarks manually and make them available to SC. The most common way of doing this is:

  1. Download Quarks with your preferred svn-client by running:

svn co https://svn.code.sf.net/p/quarks/code quarks

You can later use svn to update your quarks:

svn update

The complete collection of Quarks will be downloaded into a folder quarks at the location where you ran the command. Within that folder you will find many folders, one for each Quark. The Quarks you want to install needs to be copied or "hardlinked" into a folder where SC can find them. Usually a folder called Extensions in the user application support directory is used for this purpose. It is located within the folder:

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\SuperCollider

See below for the variations of this location on different Windows versions, or evaluate Platform.userAppSupportDir in the SC editor and use the output in the post window.

  1. If you don't find an Extensions folder, create it manually as:

YourUserAppSupportDir\Extensions

For example:

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\SuperCollider\Extensions

  1. Copy or "hardlink" the folder containing each Quark you want to install into this folder (you can create a subfolder within the Extensions folder to bundle your Quarks there). "Hardlinking" [1] has the advantage, that on subsequent svn updates, SC will automatically get the updated versions.

  2. Now look for a file in the folder quarks/DIRECTORY with the same name as your Quark (and the extension .quark). Open it in a text editor and look for the key \dependencies. If you find it (only some Quarks have dependencies) add the quark(s) listed there to the mix (i.e. copy or hardlink them to your Extensions folder).

  3. After recompiling your class library or restarting SC your Quarks should be available.

Uninstall

Should you ever decide to uninstall SuperCollider, it is the easiest to use the uninstaller executable provided in the application folder, or to use the uninstall service provided in the 'Add-/Remove Programs' dialogue. This will remove all files from the application folder, and the SC registry settings - provided things were not changed manually since last install. The support files (in AppData\SuperCollider) are not removed automatically, because they usually contain user specific data that might be useful in a subsequent install. If they bother you, you need to remove them manually. The AppData folder is hidden by default, so you might need to unhide it to find your folder. In case of an update or reinstall pay also attention to plugins residing in the support folders. They are minor-version specific and cause error messages if they do not fit the installed SuperCollider version.

NOTE: Changed location of extensions and configuration files

The location of application-related user data has moved in accordance with Windows policies. This means that from version 3.6.1 on, SuperCollider will not pick up extensions, startup file, and configuration files from locations used by previous versions.

To continue using extensions and configuration from versions prior to 3.6.1, please copy the contents of the old directory to the new one, given below:

The new directory

Windows 7 / Vista

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\SuperCollider

Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Local Settings\Application Data\SuperCollider

The old directories

Between versions 3.6.0 and 3.6.1

Windows 7 / Vista

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\SuperCollider

Windows XP

C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Application Data\SuperCollider

Prior to version 3.6.0

Windows 7 / Vista:

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\SuperCollider

Windows XP

C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\SuperCollider

Outro

Thanks to James McCartney, for making this great piece of audio software publically and freely available.

[1] http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html