Terminology: Most of the appearance and behaviour of the screen of
is controlled by a complex program called a window manager. The
window manager that you are using is mwm (the Motif Window
Manager). At the risk of confusing, the window manager is not Unix
- it is just an `ordinary' program acting as a sophisticated interface
between you and Unix.
Terminology: At the risk of confusing further, what goes on within
windows is not Unix either - nor usually mwm. Windows are just lines
of communication between programs and yourself.
What goes on in most windows is controlled by a program
which is simulating an old fashioned terminal. These windows are xterms.
(The interactions that you have within an xterm window are much
more directly interactions with traditional Unix - though even that
statement needs some qualification, see the ksh discussion below.)
In the rest of this section features determined by mwm are
flagged with , and those determined by xterm are flagged
. If you want to know more about mwm or xterm
then you can consult the Unix manual page entries (use commands
man mwm or man xterm).
A menu of useful actions is available by clicking,
holding and dragging
with the cursor not positioned in any window (i.e. positioned in the
``root window'' or background). When you release the button the
selected action takes place.
Via this menu you can open new working windows,
rearrange the ``stacking order'' of the windows on the screen, etc.
Important: you log out via an option in this menu.
There are two ``buttons'' adjacent to the title bar in each
window. They are the small squares: one at the left containing a short
horizontal bar, and one at the right containing a large dot.
Clicking on the lefthand button pops up a menu of window control
actions: drag and release to select an action. (Note: most of the
control actions are more easily obtained by other methods, see
below.)
Clicking on the righthand button iconifies the
window: an ``icon'' appears at the bottom of the screen in place of
the full size window. Whatever was happening in the window is
unaffected by this apparently drastic action. Restore the full
size window by double clicking rapidly on the icon, or by
clicking once and then selecting Restore from the menu that
appears.
If you need to see the whole of a window which is partly
obscured by other windows, then simply clicking on either the title bar or
frame of the window will ``raise'' the window, so that it is ``in
front'' of all the other windows. Individual windows may be
``lowered'' by clicking on their frame with the right button.
Move a window by clicking in the title bar and dragging.
Each xterm records part of the interaction
which has scrolled off the top of the window
in a scroll buffer. The vertical border at the left of the window
is a scroll bar: the shaded part indicates which portion of the
scroll buffer is currently on view. To scroll the text in a window so
that you can review earlier interaction you must position the cursor in
the scroll bar (the cursor changes to a double-ended arrow):
Clicking on either the left or right mouse button
will jump the text forwards and backwards respectively (by a distance equal
to the distance between the cursor and the top of the window).
Using the middle button, you can drag the scroll bar
(and hence the text) up and down until you find the text that you are
interested in.
Cutting and pasting: To cut (that means ``copy'') text from a
window, click and drag using the left mouse button to highlight the text
to be cut - when you release, the text is noted. If you then
press the middle button the noted text is ``pasted'' as if
it were being typed at the keyboard. Pressing and dragging the right
mouse button allows you to extend and cut the previously selected text.
Text cut from one window can be pasted into another window.
There are various menus available for altering
the appearance and behaviour of xterm windows. With the cursor
positioned in the window:
Holding the CTRL key and pressing both mouse buttons
together pops up a menu of terminal control options (such as switching to
reverse video). Drag and release to switch an option on or off.
Holding the CTRL key and pressing the right mouse button
pops up a menu that allows you to change the size of the characters in the
window - from unreadably small to huge.
There is also a left button menu, but it's less useful.
