Volume 7A: XView Programming Manual

Requests for Comments

Please write to tell us about any flaws you find in this manual or how you think it could be

improved, to help us provide you with the best documentation possible.

Our U.S. mail address, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses are as follows:

O’Reilly and Associates, Inc.

103 Morris Street, Suite A

Sebastopol, CA 95472

in USA and Canada 1-800-998-9938,

international [phone]

UUCP: uunet!ora!xview Internet: [e-mail]

Obtaining the Example Programs

The example programs in this book are available electronically in a number of ways: by ftp,

ftpmail, bitftp, and uucp. The cheapest, fastest, and easiest ways are listed first. If you read

from the top down, the first one that works for you is probably the best. Use ftp if you are

directly on the Internet. Use ftpmail if you are not on the Internet but can send and receive

electronic mail to internet sites (this includes CompuServe users). Use

BITFTP if you send

electronic mail via BITNET. Use UUCP if none of the above works.

FTP

To use FTP, you need a machine with direct access to the Internet. A sample session is

shown, with what you should type in boldface.

% ftp ftp.uu.net

Connected to ftp.uu.net.

220 FTP server (Version 6.21 Tue Mar 10 22:09:55 EST 1992) ready.

Name (ftp.uu.net:eileen): anonymous

331 Guest login ok, send domain style e-mail address as password.

Password: [e-mail] (use your user name and host here)

230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.

ftp> cd /published/oreilly/xbook/xview

250 CWD command successful.

ftp> binary (Very important! You must specify binary transfer for compressed files.)

200 Type set to I.

ftp> get xview.ora.examples.tar.Z

200 PORT command successful.

150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for xview.ora.examples.tar.Z.

226 Transfer complete.

ftp> quit

221 Goodbye.

%

xxxviii XView Programming Manual

If the file is a compressed tar archive, extract the files from the archive by typing:

% zcat xview.ora.examples.tar.Z | tar xvf –

System V systems require the following tar command instead:

% zcat xview.ora.examples.tar.Z | tar xovf –

If zcat is not available on your system, use separate uncompress and tar commands.

FTPMAIL

FTPMAIL is a mail server available to anyone who can send and receive electronic mail to

and from Internet sites. This includes most workstations that have an email connection to the

outside world, and CompuServe users. You do not need to be directly on the Internet. Here’s

how to do it.

You send mail to [e-mail]. In the message body, give the name of the anon-

ymous ftp host and the ftp commands you want to run. The server will run anonymous ftp for

you and mail the files back to you. To get a complete help file, send a message with no sub-

ject and the single word “help” in the body. The following is an example mail session that

should get you the examples. This command sends you a listing of the files in the selected

directory, and the requested examples file. The listing is useful in case there’s a later version

of the examples you’re interested in.

% mail [e-mail]

Subject:

reply [e-mail] (where you want files mailed)

connect ftp.uu.net

chdir /published/oreilly/xbook/xview

dir

binary

uuencode (or btoa if you have it)

get xview.ora.examples.tar.Z

quit

%

A signature at the end of the message is acceptable as long as it appears after “quit.”

All retrieved files will be split into 60KB chunks and mailed to you. You then remove the

mail headers and concatenate them into one file, and then uudecode or btoa it. Once you’ve

got the desired file, follow the directions under FTP to extract the files from the archive.

VMS, DOS, and Mac versions of uudecode, btoa, uncompress, and tar are available. The

VMS versions are on gatekeeper.dec.com in /archive/pub/VMS.

Preface

Preface xxxix

BITFTP

BITFTP is a mail server for BITNET users. You send it electronic mail messages requesting

files, and it sends you back the files by electronic mail. BITFTP currently serves only users

who send it mail from nodes that are directly on BITNET, EARN, or NetNorth. BITFTP is a

public service of Princeton University. Here’s how it works.

To use BITFTP, send mail containing your ftp commands to BITFTP@PUCC. For a complete

help file, send HELP as the message body.

The following is the message body you should send to BITFTP:

FTP ftp.uu.net NETDATA

USER anonymous

PASS

your Internet email address (not your bitnet address)

CD /published/oreilly/xbook/xview

DIR

BINARY

GET xview.ora.examples.tar.Z

QUIT

Once you’ve got the desired file, follow the directions under FTP to extract the files from the

archive. Since you are probably not on a UNIX system, you may need to get versions of

uudecode, uncompress, btoa, and tar for your system. VMS, DOS, and Mac versions are

available. The VMS versions are on gatekeeper.dec.com in /archive/pub/VMS.

Questions about BITFTP can be directed to Melinda Varian, MAINT@PUCC on BITNET.

UUCP

UUCP

is standard on virtually all

UNIX systems, and is available for IBM-compatible PCs and

Apple Macintoshes. The examples are available by UUCP via modem from UUNET;

UUNET’s connect-time charges apply.

You can get the examples from UUNET whether you have an account or not. If you or your

company has an account with UUNET, you will have a system with a direct UUCP connection

to

UUNET. Find that system, and type:

uucp uunet\!˜published/oreilly/xbook/xview/xview.ora.examples.tar.Z yourhost\!˜/yourname/

The backslashes can be omitted if you use the Bourne shell (sh) instead of csh. The file

should appear some time later (up to a day or more) in the directory /usr/spool/uucppub-

lic/yourname. If you don’t have an account but would like one so that you can get electronic

mail, then contact

UUNET at 703-204-8000.

If you don’t have a UUNET account, you can set up a UUCP connection to UUNET using the

phone number 1-900-468-7727. As of this writing, the cost is 50 cents per minute. The

charges will appear on your next telephone bill. The login name is “uucp” with no password.

For example, an L.sys/Systems entry might look like:

uunet Any ACU 19200 1-900-468-7727 login:--login: uucp

xl XView Programming Manual

Your entry may vary depending on your UUCP configuration. If you have a PEP-capable

modem, make sure s50=255s111=30 is set before calling.

It’s a good idea to get the file /published/oreilly/xbook/ls-lR.Z as a short test file containing

the filenames and sizes of all the files in the directory.

Once you’ve got the desired file, follow the directions under FTP to extract the files from the

archive.

Acknowledgments

I always wanted to do this—but for my first record album! :-)

This book was influenced by an amalgamation of several sources: The SunView Program-

mer’s Manual for design and structure of the chapters, the people on the XView development

team at Sun Microsystems for technical detail and the latest up-to-the-minute changes, and

my personal experience in programming for narrative content. Chapter 1, XView and the X

Window System, is based on Chapter 1 of Volume Four, X Toolkit Intrinsics Programming

Manual, by Adrian Nye.

This book was created using SoftQuad’s sqtroff, a PostScript laser printer and a Sun 3/60

color workstation.

Special thanks to everyone at O’Reilly & Associates for their diligent efforts. In particular,

Dale Dougherty, Daniel Gilly, Laurel Katz, Lenny Muellner, Chris Reilley, Ruth Terry, and

Sue Willing. Many others pitched in for the final push to complete this book.

At Sun Microsystems, I’d like to thank Richard Probst who helped make this entire project

possible, Tom Jacobs, for keeping everything in order and reading all that e-mail, Tony

Hillman, and the rest of the reviewing squad.

Also, Bart Schaefer, for taking care of Mush while I’ve been too busy. Mike Ilnicki for con-

tinuing to play racquetball with me. Penguin’s frozen yogurt for nutrition. David Letterman

for being on at the perfect time: dinner.

. . . and most of all, I’d like to thank Tim O’Reilly—the only one who could talk me, a

cast-in-stone programmer, into trying my hand at technical writing. Thanks for the confi-

dence in me.

Preface

Preface xli

Acknowledgments for XView Version 3 Update

Thanks to John Stone for all his help in preparing this manual. John dealt with formatting

issues and helped produce several review drafts. Special thanks also go to Darci Chapman

for her assistance. Jon Lee edited several chapters of the draft.

Dale Dougherty kept the big picture in sight and managed this project. Thanks to Chris Reil-

ley who did the illustrations. Lenny Muellner, Sue Willing, Michael Sierra, and Eileen Kra-

mer put the final manual together.

The XView developers at Sun Microsystems spent many hours reviewing the new chapters as

well as the draft of the complete, updated manual. In particular, Chris Kasso added exten-

sively to the new Version 3 material and answered numerous questions. Thanks to Isa

Hashim who made many additions and corrections. Mitch Jerome was very helpful and pro-

vided a large amount of new material. Darren Austin, Sri Atreya, Shirley Joe, and Shanmugh

Natarajan reviewed several drafts and helped in numerous ways. Stan Raichlen helped to test

the code and update the figures. Thanks also go to Tony Hillman, Bhaskar Prabhala, and

Greg Kimura. Carole Coffland, Dave Borders, Jeremy Uejio, Dipti Ranganathan, Richard

Goldstein, and Martha Venegas read the draft of this manual and made helpful suggestions.

Despite all the reviews, any errors that remain are my own.

xlii XView Programming Manual