Installation Guide

Prerequisites

Screenshot of the MATE terminal

If you are using Ubuntu MATE, then you can get all the prerequisites with:
sudo apt-get install pluma gcc make unzip ngspice

This installs:

Pluma:

Text editor

GCC:

GNU Compiler Collection (C compiler)

Make:

For building and installing/uninstalling

Unzip:

For extracting ZIP archives

Ngspice:

Circuit simulator

For other text editors a rather good list can be found here.

Compiling From Source

Screenshot of the MATE terminal

If you have downloaded the ZIP file of Pixel Spark Version 1.0.13, and it is in your Downloads folder, the terminal commands to extract the ZIP archive are:

cd Downloads
unzip leung-engineering-pixelspark-v-1-0-13.zip

This will extract the project root directory into your Downloads folder.

Then it is simply a case of:

cd where/pixelspark/root/directory/is
make
./build/pixelspark

If you are feeling dangerous, you can copy pixelspark to your /usr/bin directory:
sudo make install

Or if you don't trust makefiles:
sudo cp build/pixelspark /usr/bin

To check that it has been installed:
pixelspark

Operation

Creating and opening a Pixel Spark file in your home directory is done like this:
pixelspark ~/directory/name-of-file

Or if you have not installed it, this will create and open a file called 1.sch in your home directory:
./where-pixelspark-root-directory-is/pixelspark-root-directory/build/pixelspark ~/1.sch

You can always save to wherever you like and name it to whatever you like.

Opening a Pixel Spark file is done the same way as creating the file:
pixelspark ~/directory/name-of-file

Or for those who have not installed it:
./where-pixelspark-root-directory-is/pixelspark-root-directory/build/pixelspark ~/directory/name-of-file