Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Appendix A
Some Computer Basics
To make good use of this topic, you need to be able to perform some simple operations
on a computer. (You do
not
need to know how to program a computer.) Mainly these
involve creating, deleting, editing, saving, and printing ordinary text files, as well as
viewing and printing PDF files.
If you are using this topic as part of a course, find the website site for this topic,
which contains a number of useful files.
A.1 Working with computer files
Here is a checklist of operations you should be able to do comfortably as you start to
use the topic:
1.
View these instructions on a computer screen. Go to the topic website which has
a file called
basics.pdf
that contains this appendix in PDF format.
2.
Print these instructions on a computer printer.
3.
Save these instructions in a file on your computer called
basics.pdf
. You should
also be able to come back to your computer later, find your copy of the file on
your computer, and view it on your screen.
4.
Delete the file
basics.pdf
from your computer, and go back to reading the online
version of the file at the topic website for the next step.
5.
Go to the topic website and find the file
basics.pl
. Click on the file, and down-
load it to your computer. This is a text file that contains a simple program in the
language Prolog. Your computer won't be able to do much with the file yet.
6.
Make a copy of the file
basics.pl
and call it
origbasics.pl
. This one is for
safekeeping.
7.
View the contents of the file
basics.pl
in a text editor on your computer. You
can use a basic editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac) or nedit (Linux),
or a fancier one like Microsoft Word or vi or emacs.
Windows and Mac users
:You
will
not
be able to simply double-click the file; you will need to start the editor
first and then open the file from there.
