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Installing_and_starting_Protoreto

Daniel Herding

You can either install a binary release, or use the bleeding-edge development version. Unexperienced users should use the binary release.

Installing and starting the binary release

You can download the binary release of Protoreto from the download page. Download 

protoreto-bin-0.3.1.zip

(or a newer version, if one is available). Unpack the contents of the archive to a directory of your choice, for example to 

C:\Program Files\Protoreto

. In Windows, you can now open that directory with Explorer and double-click on 

protoreto-editor.jar

or 

protoreto-runtime.jar

.

Using other systems, you can start the Protoreto Editor by typing this into your command line: 

java -jar lib/protoreto-editor.jar

The Protoreto Runtime can be started like this: 

java -jar lib/protoreto-runtime.jar

Handling out-of-memory errors

In order to guarantee a smooth interaction, Protoreto preloads all required image files (background images etc.) of a prototype into memory. While this works fine for small prototypes, it will probably cause out-of-memory errors when you create a prototype with many large background images. This is because the Java Virtual Machine is limited to 64 MB by default. Unfortunatelly, Protoreto's image caching strategy is currently not well-suited for such large images.

To prevent crashes when working with very large images (e.g. fullscreen screenshots), start Protoreto with: 

java -jar -Xmx512M lib/protoreto-editor.jar

or: 

java -jar -Xmx512M lib/protoreto-runtime.jar

This will set the memory limit of the Java Virtual Machine to 512 MB instead of only 64 MB (The value of 512 MB has been chosen arbitrarily at this point).

Permanently increasing the Java memory limit

If you followed the instructions above, you might find it inconvenient to start Protoreto from the command line. For example, in Microsoft Windows, it is much easier to start Protoreto by double-clicking on the JAR file.

If you want, you can set the new memory limit globally (i. e. for all Java applications that you start on your computer) by defining an environment variable. The variable should be called 

_JAVA_OPTIONS

(including the underscores), and its value should be, for example: 

Xmx512M

In Microsoft Windows, you can define an environment variable by choosing Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables -> New -> Enter variable 

_JAVA_OPTIONS

and variable value 

Xmx512M

-> OK -> OK -> OK. Restart Protoreto for this change to take effect.

Installing and starting the development version

You can check out the up-to-date development version directly from Subversion (SVN). The SVN module is called 

protoreto

. Please see the Protoreto SVN page for information on how to check out Protoreto.

With Eclipse

If you're using Eclipse, you can install and use Subclipse to check out the project:

  • New Project
  • SVN -> Checkout Projects from SVN

  • New Repository:

    • Location: 

      https://protoreto.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/protoreto

    • Select folder: 

      /trunk/protoreto

    • Click on "Finish"
      Using the Eclipse Package Explorer, open the class

    protoreto.editor.EditorUI

(you find it in 

protoreto/src

). Start the Protoreto Editor using Run -> Run As -> Java Application. The Protoreto Runtime can be started similarly by running class 

protoreto.PrototypeRuntime

. To generate JAR files from Eclipse, right-click on the file 

build.xml

in the Package Explorer, then choose "Run as > Ant Build...". Check the "make-jars" target, then click "Run". The JAR files will be placed in the 

lib

directory.

Without Eclipse

If you're not using Eclipse, you need to install an SVN client to check out the Protoreto development version. See this page for a list of SVN clients recommended by SourceForge. The page also contains links to documentation on how to configure these applications for use with SourceForge.

After checking out the source code, you need to compile it. You should install Apache Ant for this. Afterwards, open a command line. Use 

cd

to change to the directory to which you checked out Protoreto. Then run these commands: 

ant build
ant make-jars

Ant will then create JAR files in the 

lib

directory. You can now run these JARs as described in the section Installing and starting the binary release.

Protoreto-Tutorials

1. Installing and starting Protoreto
2. Creating a simple prototype >>

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