We will send you a link to the software on our server. Download the file and save it to your desktop or some other location you have access to.

Windows privileges

There is no option during installation to select a destination folder. PLP/MCU installs and runs from the following folder–

 C:\Program Files\TMQ\PLP

–and all of the files it creates are, by default, written to subfolders of the installation folder.

Thus, PLP requires that whoever runs the program be an 'Administrator' in Windows. This applies not only to installation, but to program usage also.¹⁾.

Installation

When the software has been downloaded, double-click on the downloaded file to run the installer. The format of the installation filename is

 setupPlpMcu-3-xxx.exe 

where 'xxx' represents a subversion number.

When the installation completes, there may be a screen listing the changes made in the current subversion, and a link to this website.

The following screenshot shows a typical file layout when the installation completes:

The program folder is C:\Program Files\TMQ\PLP. The typical contents after installation are:

• _drives.ini –a small textfile used to override default settings
• mcu.exe–executable for the MARC Compare Utility (MCU)
• plp.exe–executable for PLP (the Pre-Load Processor)
• help–folder containing some PLP documentation
• Options–default folder for the configuration files
• Sessions–default folder for the data files created by PLP/MCU

When the program first runs, a file called _sequence.ini will be created in the installation folder. This file is used for enumerating the sessions and ensures a Session Id is never used twice. Never change or move this file!

Also, when the program first runs, and at the first run of any subversion, default PLP configuration files will be generated in the Options folder. These files are persistent–if you delete them, the program will regenerate the next time it starts.²⁾

The name of this file is not very descriptive, but it is read by both PLP and MCU when they start. This file allows the user to change the default locations for the Options and Sessions folders, and to set a default location for incoming MARC data.

The settings that might be useful to most users:

marcfolder=D:\Marc\
optionsfolder=\\library\batch\options\plp\
topsessionfolder=D:\marc\mcu\

The syntax of _drives.ini is as shown above: the option name in lowercase, followed by '=' (no space), followed by (again, no space) the option value. Please do not use relative pathnames for option values.

1. The first option, 'marcfolder', simply tells the program where to open dialogs when you are selecting a file of MARC records. The default value for this option is null; but if the program finds a '\Marc' folder in the root of your drive (eg. 'C:\MARC'), it will open dialogs there.
2. The second option, 'optionsfolder', tells the program where to save all of the options you create in PLP. The default value is as noted above. If you change this folder, the next time PLP starts, it will generate another set of default options and write them to the folder specified here. You can copy options files (very small files) from one location to another when the program is not running.
3. The third option, 'topsessionfolder', tells the program where to save all of the Sessions (data files) generated by PLP. The default value for this folder is as noted above. If you change this folder, the next time PLP or MCU start, they will look in the folder specified here for session data. Unlike option files, session data cannot be easily moved from one location to antoher. If the 'topsessionfolder' setting is changed, sessions created in the default Sessions folder will not be readily accessible in PLP or MCU. Therefore, during program testing, try to decide where you want to store your session data–before you start to generate too much of it.

MCU Options

Unlike PLP, all of the options that can be set in MCU pertain to the layout of the record displays; these options are not stored in a config file, but in the system registry, in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TMQ\PLP folder. MCU options are thus user-specific; whereras PLP options are machine-specific.

When a new subversion is released, follow the installation steps above. There are usually only two files that need to be replaced in an update, mcu.exe and plp.exe. No other files will be overwritten, with the exception of the default option files, which will be updated the next time the program starts.