From sonia

Installing SoNIA

The easiest way to install SoNIA is to download the most recent version of the install_sonia_<version number>.jar file from sourceforge and run the installer.

After clicking install, it will ask you to select a directory for installation, and then download the corresponding version of SoNIA and the required Colt, FreeHep, and JavaSWF libraries from their respective websites. It will also display the license agreements, and gives the option at the end to open a website to download the QuickTime installer from Apple. Run the Quicktime installer.

Note: in some situations you may need to enter a dummy file name when selecting a directory with the installer.

SoNIA is a Java application, so you must have a current version of java (1.5+) installed on your system. You can check Java is installed, and find out what version is running, by typing:

java -version

at your command prompt. Instructions on how to download and install java are here: http://www.java.com/en/download/

If you are installing SoNIA without using the installer, the library files it uses (Colt, FreeHep, JavaSWF) need to be installed in a directory named "lib" in the same directory as the sonia.jar file.

Starting the program

SoNIA can now be launched by double-clicking on the "sonia.jar" file.

Another option is to run it from the command line, as it seems to give faster performance, better error information, and some additional options. To do this, bring up your terminal window (C:\ prompt in Windows), navigate to the directory
containing sonia, and type:

java -cp sonia.jar sonia.SoniaController

or

java -jar sonia.jar</code>

and hit return. This gives you the option to always force-quit SoNIA by returning to this window and pressing "control-c".

Reporting Errors

Please keep us posted when you encounter errors or if you have any great ideas. You can post them too the bug tracking section of this site (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=119448&atid=683980), email a description of what happened (please copy the text of error from the console window) to the sonia-users list, or post it in the help forum.