The initial X screen should have three windows on a gray background, one with a red background (clock) and one with a wheat background (mailbox). The two in the lower right corner of the screen are an analog clock and a mailbox. The clock is xclock and displays the system time. The mailbox is xbiff. If it is darkened, then you have unread mail. If you receive new mail while you are logged in, then the machine will beep and the mailbox icon become darkened. The other three windows will be placed as follows:
The X Window System is the base system for a mouse-oriented window manager for bitmapped displays such as those provided on the workstations in the CSIP. One of the most important things to know about X is how to move around.
First there is the cursor, a small bold-faced capital X. The mouse controls the cursor's movement. If you move the cursor inside the borders of a window, then all keyboard input will be directed there. When this happens, the texture of the window's header changes, and the window is said to have the keyboard focused on it. Most of the workstations have autoraise capabilities with a 500 milliseconds delay. AOW's do not have the 500 milliseconds delay.
The following applied only to non-AOW's:
There are three buttons on the mouse. If you press either the left or the middle buttons on the mouse while the cursor is on the background (the root window) and not touching any border of a window, then you will get nothing.
If you depress and hold the right button on the mouse while the cursor is on the background (the root window) and not touching any border of a window, then you will be given the Hosts menu for logins to all machines supported by the DSP group as well as some on the GT campus network. The machine names are grouped by machine type (sun4, sun-20, sun-10, etc.). To see a sub-menu, position the cursor on the sub-menu label and pull the cursor to the right. A high light bar should appear whenever you move within a menu or sub-menu. A second submenu give you different options that applied to windows (new window, shuffle up, shuffle down, etc.). Finally you have the options to restart and quit (Silicon Graphics have log out and New directory options).
If you depress and hold the right mouse button on the mouse while the cursor is on top border of any window, then you will be given the menu ``Window Ops'' for controlling some of the window characteristics (size, position, movement, etc.). Some of the options are Move, Size, Minimize and so on.
The following applied only to AOW's:
If you depress and hold the left button, then you will be given the Hosts menu for logins to all machines supported by the DSP group as well as some on the GT campus network. The machine names are grouped by machine type (sun4, sun-20, sin-10, etc.). To see a sub-menu, position the cursor on the sub-menu label and pull the cursor to the right. A high light bar should appear whenever you move within a menu or sub-menu.
If you depress and hold the middle mouse button, then you will be given the Window Ops menu. This is simply a menu of useful services that affect one or more windows on the screen. Two sub-menus are available from this menu. The first, the Extended Window Ops menu, lists the more useful window operations. The other sub-menu concerns the window manager itself.
If you depress and hold the right button, then you will be given a menu divided up into 5 sections. All sections except the last are simply a list of applications commonly used by the DSP community.
The last section is simply a list of menus that will give a description of what functions are available when using the mouse and functions keys separately or in conjunction. For example, if you press the right button on the mouse while on the background, then the Commands menu appears, but if you hold down the meta key (this key differs on different types of machines -- use the diamond key on the sun4's) and press the right mouse button, then the Cut Buffer menu (which is useful for transferring text between windows) is displayed. The Mouse Buttons and Function Keys sub-menus are also available at the bottom of the menu when you press either the left or middle mouse button.
By default, every window that is created in X will have a title bar. This is a dark line at the top border. If you move the cursor onto this border, the cursor will change to an arrow pointing to the upper left. If you now depress and hold the middle mouse button (or the left button), you will see an outline of the window appear and you can move the outline around by moving the cursor. While the outline is being moved, the cursor changes to a plus with arrows in all four directions. When you let go of the button, the window will be placed in the new location. This is the easiest way to move windows. You may also choose the move option from the ``Window Ops'' menu.
If you wish to learn more about how to use the facilities that are already provided, then you should try the on-line manual pages on any of the DSP machines or ask a system operator. There is a man page for the Motif Window Manager, just type mwm. There is also a postscript (compressed) file named main.ps.gz (slide format) that covers the Mwm and the Twm as well as some X-window information. It is located in ~ chanin/PUB/ (for DSP accounts).