On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 06:09:14PM -0400, Kim LeBouton wrote: > I just realized that when I'm using SAS display manager in UNIX, with eXceed > as my emulation, that I need to highlight the particular window (e.g., PGM, > LOG, and OUTPUT) with the mouse to actively use it. (The flavor of UNIX > that I'm using is AIX.) > > When using SAS on the PC or MVS, if I type PGM from a command line, I go to > the program window and it is already highlighted. The same is true for the > other windows. While in UNIX, if I type PGM from a command line, I stay in > the current window. > > Has anybody else noted this behavior? If so, did you find a way to get SAS > to behave similar to the other two operating systems mentioned?

Kim:

Window behavior under Linux and Linux-like operating systems such as AIX <g> is determined by the window manager. Most proprietary Unices use what is called the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), based heavily on Motif. While I'm not positive this is what you're using, I'd strongly suspect it. If not, details are reasonably similar for other window managers.

CDE info: http://www.plig.org/xwinman/cde.html

While it is an industry standard, CDE is virtually completely undocumented online in many implementations, and the offline docs are few and poor. The best (low standard) I've found is Charles Fernandez's _Configuring CDE: The Common Desktop Environment_, Prentice Hall. If you're really interested in the guts of the window manager, get O'Reilly's _X Window System User's Guide_, (Volume 3-M of the X Window System Series -- this is the Motif edition, not the other), and the _X Window System Administrator's Guide_ (Vol. 8). They're probably overkill, but they'll answer most of your questions.

What you are looking for is the ability to autoraise windows and/or raise on focus. IIRC, you can change this behavior under the control panel of CDE, it's usually represented by the icon with a palette, mouse, and window titlebar, just to the right of the printer icon, on the control bar. With that said, I'm not sure quite how best to get around this problem, though I had a fix that worked for me.

Under X Windows, several things are configurable, including what's called "focus policy", which specifies how the window manager decides what window has input focus -- responds to keyboard and mouse input. The two general variants are called "explicit focus" and "pointer focus". Under explicit focus, you click the mouse in a window to get its attention (much as under MS Windows). With pointer focus, merely moving the mouse over a window is sufficient to focus it. My own preference is pointer (or a variant, sloppy focus, but that's another story).

My fix was to modify the default desktop config file, dtwmrc, to allow me to circulate (cycle through) windows on a hotkey combination -- usually <alt><tab> or <ctrl><tab>, depending on which were available to the X Terminal Emulator software (MS Windows ordinarily preempts these keystrokes).

If you haven't already modified this file, you may need to copy it from a system default location, usually under /etc or /etc/skel.

Add to this a SAS window layout something like this:

+--------------------------------------+ |LOG | | +---------------------------------------+ | |LIST | | | | | | | | | | | +---------------------------------------+ | | |PGM * | | +-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +---------------------------------------+-+

...with the asterix indicating the pointer (mouse cursor) position. I can then cycle between windows either with a hotkey combination, with SAS cycling keys (<ctrl>-A, etc.), or by entering "PGM", "LOG", "LIST", etc., on the SAS window command line. The pointer being in a position overlapping all three windows, the topmost window takes focus. Simple, no? <g>

All of this is much easier to configure under one of the more modern window managers now available for Linux and other OSs. Several of these are listed at the Window Managers for X page.

My own preference is WindowMaker, a NeXT-like window manager with GUI configuration keys and extensive keybindings for features such as window and workspace circulation. I use it under Linux. It can be compiled under a number of environments, including AIX and possibly Windows NT with appropriate Unix compatibility tools, to be run locally for managing your X terminal emulator session.

Interestingly enough, window circulation and sizing are two of the reasons I strongly prefer WindowMaker. In particular, being able to vertically maximize a window (80 columns x 24 lines becomes 80 cols x 60) with an <alt><space> is a *major* boon when coding or reviewing text in multiple windows.

Window Managers for X -- home page http://www.plig.org/xwinman/

WindowMaker http://www.plig.org/xwinman/wmaker.html

Also popular are KDE and Gnome (full desktop environments), Blackbox, Sawmill (soon to be Sawfish), and Enlightenment.

And there's always twm <g>

-- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http:/www.netcom.com/~kmself What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ GPG fingerprint: F932 8B25 5FDD 2528 D595 DC61 3847 889F 55F2 B9B0