Running MacLogic Under Emulation

MacLogic is, to my mind, the best computer program in existence for teaching and learning how to do natural deduction proofs (in a variety of logics). The program was originally written in MacProlog for Classic Macintosh operating systems by Roy Dyckhoff et al. at St Andrews. The (classical, non-modal) natural deduction systems included in MacLogic are almost identical to those used in Graeme Forbes's excellent introductory logic textbook Modern Logic. This makes Modern Logic + MacLogic quite a formidable pedagogical combination.

Unfortunately, MacLogic was never ported to more recent Macintosh operating systems (or any other platforms). And, since new macs do not even ship with Classic Mode installed, this makes using MacLogic a challenge, to say the least. That's the bad news.

The good news is that Apple has now made Mac OS 7.5.3 freely available (see here for the free 7.5.5 updater). Moreover, a robust open source Mac OS 7 emulator (which runs MacLogic beautifully on many platforms) has recently appeared on the scene. This has allowed me to produce freeware emulation kits for MacLogic that will run on Mac OSX (on both Intel and PowerPC architectures, and without the need for Classic Mode), and Windows operating systems (Windows 95 through Windows 8). Kits for Linux and other operating systems are also pretty easy to create. Happily, this makes MacLogic a very usable piece of software in today's logic classroom!

Here are links to my MacLogic emulation kits for Mac OSX and Windows (verified to be working on mac OS X Catalina and Windows 10 as of 02/12/20).

http://fitelson.org/maclogic_osx.zip
http://fitelson.org/maclogic_windows.zip

These kits are self-contained, and will basically run MacLogic straight out of the box. I have included a readme file (pdf format) in each kit, which explains how to set them up. The setup is pretty easy – on the mac it just involves setting a couple of preferences after downloading (on Windows, there is one additional step – installing GTK, which is included in the Windows kit). [Note: these bundles also include MacLogic fonts, MacLogic documentation, and MacLogic problem files containing all examples and exercises from chapters 4, 6, & 8 of Modern Logic.]

Setting up kits for other platforms (e.g., Linux) is relatively easy as well. Here is a link to the core files (with readme) you'll need to set-up an emulator on your platform of choice. [Again, this zip is around 40MB, and when it's extracted the resulting folder is around 195MB.]

http://fitelson.org/maclogic_core.zip

Finally, if you still have a Mac that can run a Classic Mac OS (OS 7 – OS 9.2), then you can just download my Classic Mac OS MacLogic (for Modern Logic) bundle, which also includes the fonts, documentation, and example and exercise files for chapters 4, 6, and 8 of Modern Logic. [Note: this Macintosh .sit archive is much smaller in size – it weighs-in at a mere 875KB.]

http://fitelson.org/maclogic.sit

I also have extensive lecture notes (and other materials) for teaching introductory symbolic logic using Modern Logic + MacLogic. See my teaching page.