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4. Running MGR

The only file required in an MGR installation is the server itself. That would give you terminal emulator windows with shells running in them and cutting and pasting with the mouse, but no nice clocks, extra fonts, fancy graphics, etc. Depending on options, a monochrome server needs about 200K of RAM plus dynamic space for windows, bitmaps, etc.

If /usr/mgr/bin is in your PATH, then just type "mgr" to start up. After enjoying the animated startup screen, press any key. When the hatched background and mouse pointer appear, hold down the left mouse button, highlight the "new window" menu item, and release the button. Then drag the mouse from corner to corner where you want a window to appear. The window will have your default shell running in it. Hold down the left mouse button over an existing window to see another menu for doing things to that window. Left-clicking on an obscured window raises it to the top. The menu you saw that pops-up over the empty background includes the quit command. For people with a two button mouse: press both buttons together to emulate the missing middle button used by some clients.

The quit submenu includes the "really quit" option, a suspend option which should only be used if you run a job-control shell, and a screen saver and locker option, which waits for you to type your login password when you come back to your machine.

When trying to run MGR, if you get:

can't find the screen

make sure you have a /dev entry for your display device, e.g. on a Sun /dev/bwtwo0. If not, as root cd to /dev, and type "MAKEDEV bwtwo0". Otherwise, you might need the -S/dev/bwtwo0 or (on Linux) the -S640x480 command line option when starting mgr. On Linux, you might also make sure that /usr/mgr/bin/mgr was installed setuid root.

can't find the mouse

make sure /dev/mouse exists, usually as a symbolic link to the real device name for your mouse. If you haven't permission to write in /dev, then something like a -m/dev/cua0 option can be given when starting mgr. Also, make sure you've supplied the right mouse protocol choice when you configured mgr. The mouse may speak Microsoft, even if that is not the brand name.

can't get a pty

make sure all of /dev/[tp]ty[pq]? are owned by root, mode 666, and all programs referenced with the "shell" option in your .mgrc startup file (if any) exist and are executable.

none but the default font

make sure MGR is looking in the right place for its fonts. Check the Configfile in the source or see whether a -f/usr/mgr/font option to mgr fixes the problem.

completely hung (not even the mouse track moves)

login to your machine from another terminal (or rlogin) and kill the mgr process. A buckey-Q key can quit MGR if the keyboard still works.

4.1 Applications not aware of MGR

Any tty-oriented application can be run in an MGR window without further ado. Screen-oriented applications using termcap or curses can get the correct number of lines and columns in the window by your using shape(1) to reshape the window or using set_termcap(1) to obtain the correct termcap entry.

4.2 MGR Applications (clients) distributed with the server

bdftomgr

converts some BDF fonts to MGR fonts

browse

an icon browser

bury

bury this window

c_menu

vi menus from C compiler errors

clock

digital display of time of day

clock2

analog display of time of day

close

close this window, iconify

color

set the foreground and background color for text in this window

colormap

read or write in the color lookup table

cursor

change appearance of the character cursor

cut

cut text from this window into the cut buffer

cycle

display a sequence of icons

dmgr

crude ditroff previewer

fade

fade a home movie script from one scene to another

font

change to a new font in this window

gropbm

a groff to PBM driver using Hershey fonts

hpmgr

hp 2621 terminal emulator

ico

animate an icosahedron or other polyhedron

iconmail

notification of mail arrival

iconmsgs

message arrival notification

ify

iconify and deiconify windows

loadfont

load a font from the file system

maze

a maze game

mclock

micky mouse clock

menu

create or select a pop-up menu

mgr

bellcore window system server and window manager

mgrbd

boulder-dash game

mgrbiff

watch mailbox for mail and notify

mgrload

graph of system load average

mgrlock

lock the console

mgrlogin

graphical login controller

mgrmag

magnify a part of the screen, optionally dump to file

mgrmail

notification of mail arrival

mgrmode

set or clear window modes

mgrmsgs

message arrival notification

mgrplot

Unix "plot" graphics filter

mgrsclock

sandclock

mgrshowfont

browse through mgr fonts

mgrsketch

a sketching/drawing program

mgrview

view mgr bitmap images

mless

start up less/more in separate window, menu added for less

mnew

startup up any program in a separate, independent window

mphoon

display the current phase of the moon

mvi

start up vi in a separate window, with mouse pointing

oclose

(old) close a window

omgrmail

(old) notification of mail arrival

pbmrawtomgr, pgmrawtomgr, ppmrawtomgr

convert raw PBM/PGM/PPM image files to mgr bitmap format

pbmstream

split out a stream of bitmaps

pbmtoprt

printer output from PBM

pgs

ghostscript patch and front end, a PS viewer

pilot

a bitmap browser, or image viewer

resetwin

cleanup window state after client crashes messily

rotate

rotate a bitmap 90 degrees.

screendump

write graphics screen dump to a bitmap file

set_console

redirect console messages to this window

set_termcap

output an appropriate TERM and TERMCAP setting

setname

name a window, for messages and iconifying

shape

reshape this window

square

square this window

squeeze

compress mgr bitmap using run-length encoding

startup

produce a skeleton startup file for current window layout

texmgr

TeX dvi file previewer

text2font, font2text

convert between mgr font format and text dump

unsqueeze

uncompress mgr bitmap using run length encoding

vgafont2mgr, mgrfont2vga

convert between mgr font format and VGA

window_print

print an image of a window

zoom

an icon editor

bounce, grav, grid, hilbert, mgreyes, stringart, walk

graphics demos

4.3 MGR-aware clients distributed separately, see "SUPPORT" file

calctool

on-screen calculator

chess

frontend to /usr/games/chess

gnu emacs

editor with lisp/term/mgr.el mouse & menu support

gnuplot

universal scientific data plotting

metafont

font design and creation

origami

folding editor

pbmplus

portable bitmap format conversions, manipulations

plplot

slick scientific data plotting

The Emacs support in misc/mgr.el and misc/mailcap includes very usable MIME support, via Rmail and metamail.

A general image viewer could be cobbled together from pilot and the netPBM filters, but I have not taken the time to do it.