Installation

Web Interface

The web interface is available by visiting https://hursts.org.uk/efj with a reasonably modern web browser. The application will run on a remote server, so no installation is required. The interface is somewhat clunky compared to those available by installing locally (for security reasons, working with local files in a web browser is awkward), but all the important features are available.

Local Install

The application is distributed as a single, small (~300KB), file. This file does not require installation. Backing up the application is just a matter of copying the downloaded file to somewhere safe. Uninstall is by deleting the file.

The file is a Python zipapp, which behaves exactly like a single file Python script. This means that you need to have a Python interpreter (version 3.11 or newer) installed on your system to run it. The benefit of distributing the application in this way is that it makes it cross platform and future proof: as long as a Python interpreter is available on your platform of choice, you will be able to run the downloaded file. With the importance of Python to both academia and industry, it is anticipated that support will continue for many decades.

For Linux users, a suitable Python interpreter will almost certainly already be installed. The graphical interface uses the optional tkinter module, which some distributions package separately and don’t install by default; you may need to install this manually (it is python3-tk on Debian/Ubuntu).

Windows users can install a suitable Python Interpreter using the Microsoft Store – just search for “Python” and ensure the provider is the Python Software Foundation.

Mac users should visit https://docs.python.org/3/using/mac.html for straightforward instructions on how to install.

For downloading the application file, there are two options. Most users should download efjgui.pyw, which gives you the graphical interface. Advanced users can download efj.py, which gives you the command line interface. These links will always point to the most up to date version. Note that the gui command line option allows the graphical interface to be started from the command line interface.

Move the downloaded file to wherever you feel is appropriate — it can be run from anywhere. Somewhere referenced by your PATH variable would be sensible for the command line version. Windows users can just double click it to run it. Linux users need to set the executable permission on the file and can then run it as they would any other executable. Mac users can do the same as Linux users, or they can look at the instructions mentioned above to use the Finder.

The first time the application is run it will create a directory named .shiv in your home directory. This is just a cache that improves startup times, so feel free to delete it — it will be created afresh next time the application runs.