Vertex (or other Perple_X programs) terminates without doing anything. What
am I doing wrong? Or Vertex writes error messages but they scroll off the
screen before I can read them.

This question is invariably asked by Windows users who are running Perple_X
programs by double-clicking the program icons. The problem with running 
Perple_X this way is that the console to which error messages are written
is closed immediately the program executes making it impossible for the user
to read the error messages.

To avoid this problem, Perple_X programs should be run from a Console (i.e.,
the Windows cmd.exe program). On XP, the console can be started by clicking 
"Run" on the start menu, a window then pops up with "cmd" as the default 
choice; press OK or enter; and a black console window will appear. Then to
run a Perple_X program such as Vertex in the directory C:\jamie\Berple_X 
within the console type 

C:\>cd \jamie\Berple_X

C:\jamie\Berple_X>vertex
...

If you use Perple_X often it is useful to create a desktop shortcut to cmd.exe, 
which is usually at C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe, customized for Perple_X, to do 
this create the shortcut then modify its properties as follows:

1) Under "Shortcut" change the "Start in:" target to your Perple_X 
directory, e.g., C:\jamie\Berple_X

2) Under "Layout" change the "Screen buffer size" parameters "width"
and "height" to 150 and 3000, the former will let you read long output
lines, whereas the latter will allow you to scroll back to read 3000
lines of output.

3) Under "Options" enable "Quick Edit" and "Insert" mode if you want
to copy and paste text to or from the console.


see also www.perplex.ethz.ch/faq/Increase_page_file_size_in_windows.txt