Running windowed working environments such as X11R4 (Release 4 of X11 ), X11R5, or Open Windows on a workstation generally involves invoking both a server and a window manager. In this context, a server is a program controlling one or more displays. Client programs such as dstool make X protocol requests to the server, and it is up to the server to actually accomodate these requests. A window manager is another client program, which is given special authority to make decisions (using user and client preferences) about issues such as window placement and user interaction style. Due to the relatively low level of abstraction of some X11 services, most applications, including dstool are built using an additional toolkit library layered on top of X11.
Dstool has been tested only on Sun workstations with the X11R4 and X11R5 window systems. It may be run with either the XNews server standard on Sun systems or a generic X11 server. Dstool uses the XView toolkit for building panels and other user interface components. We believe that availability of this toolkit on other hardware platforms is the only major obstruction to using dstool in other X11 environments.
We will assume that the program has already been installed either by yourself or by a system manager. If dstool has not already been installed, please refer to the dstool Installation Manual.
Dstool uses three environment variables which will typically be set in a users .cshrc file. The variable DSTOOL should point to the root of the local dstool distribution - possibly a directory such as /usr/local/dstool. With this choice, the users .cshrc file should contain the line ``setenv DSTOOL /usr/local/dstool''. If you are unsure of this location, consult your system manager. The environment variable DSTOOL_COLOR_DIR gives the location of colormaps used by the system, when color is available. This directory will often be $DSTOOL/colormaps. The variable DSTOOL_DATA_DIR specifies a default location for data files to be saved to and loaded from.
Before accessing dstool, start up your window system and window manager in the usual way. On a Sun running Open Windows, this might be done by using the script openwin. This will call xinit, and in the course of processing (or possibly creating) your .xinitrc file, the default window manager olwm will be started.
Dstool is controlled by a collection of panels in separate windows. Windows contain buttons, menus, text fields, and drawing canvases.
To access dstool
start the program by typing dstool. If the dstool executable has been
correctly installed and lies in a directory mentioned in your
path, the dstool command window (figure ) pops up.
The top line of the window is a header containing a title such as
dstool (Version 1.0). On the left of the header line is a small
button with an inverted triangle (
)
-- this is an
Open Look convention for an abbreviated menu button.
Clicking and holding the
button of your mouse (usually the
rightmost) over this button will display a menu whose bottom entry is
Quit -- selecting this is the easiest way to exit dstool at any
time.
Below the header of the command window is a control panel. The first line controls the selected model and the second line is a series of menu buttons. By default, dstool comes up with the Lorenz system selected. You can use the abbreviated menu button between Model: and Lorenz System to choose other pre-installed dynamical systems. We'll see how to do so later.