  The MGR Window System HOWTO
  Vincent Broman
  v0.1, 1996-05-30

  Information on the installation, configuration and running of the MGR
  Window System.

  Archived Document Notice: This document has been archived by the LDP
  because it does not apply to modern Linux systems. It is no longer
  being actively maintained.
  ______________________________________________________________________

  Table of Contents


  1. This HOWTO

     1.1 Archiving
     1.2 Authentication
     1.3 Credit for the HOWTO

  2. What is the MGR window system?

     2.1 Function
     2.2 Requirements
     2.3 How do MGR, X11, and 8.5 compare?

  3. Installing MGR

  4. Running MGR

     4.1 Applications not aware of MGR
     4.2 MGR Applications (clients) distributed with the server
     4.3 MGR-aware clients distributed separately, see "SUPPORT" file

  5. Programming for MGR

  6. More documentation

  7. Credit for MGR



  ______________________________________________________________________

  1.  This HOWTO


                      Copyright Vincent Broman 1995.
         Permission granted to make and distribute copies of this HOWTO
            under the conditions of the GNU General Public License.



  1.1.  Archiving

  This HOWTO is archived in ftp://archimedes.nosc.mil/pub/Mgr/MGR-
  HOWTO.sgml, and also distributed from
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/MGR-HOWTO.  In nearby
  directories the same document may appear in alternate formats like
  MGR-HOWTO.txt.

  1.2.  Authentication

  Copies of the MGR distribution due to Broman should be accompanied by
  PGP signature files, signed by "Vincent Broman <broman@nosc.mil>".
  1.3.  Credit for the HOWTO

  While Vincent Broman first put together this HOWTO, much of the
  information and text was obtained from FAQs, READMEs, etc. written by
  Stephen Uhler, Michael Haardt, and other public-spirited net-persons.
  Email corrections and suggested changes to broman@nosc.mil.

  Uhler was the main architect of MGR -- see the Credit section below.


  2.  What is the MGR window system?


  2.1.  Function

  MGR (ManaGeR) is a graphical window system.  The MGR server provides a
  builtin window manager and windowed graphics terminal emulation on
  color and monochrome bitmap displays.  MGR is controlled by mousing
  pop-up menus, by keyboard interaction, and by escape sequences written
  on pseudo-terminals by client software.

  MGR provides each client window with: termcap-style terminal control
  functions, graphics primitives such as line and circle drawing;
  facilities for manipulating bitmaps, fonts, icons, and pop-up menus;
  commands to reshape and position windows; and a message passing
  facility enabling client programs to rendezvous and exchange messages.
  Client programs may ask to be informed when a change in the window
  system occurs, such as a reshaped window, a pushed mouse button, or a
  message sent from another client program.  These changes are called
  events.  MGR notifies a client program of an event by sending it an
  ASCII character string in a format specified by the client program.
  Existing applications can be integrated into the windowing environment
  without modification by having MGR imitate keystrokes in response to
  user defined menu selections or other events.


  2.2.  Requirements

  MGR currently runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Sun 3/4 workstations with SunOS,
  and Coherent.  Various older versions of MGR run on the Macintosh,
  Atari ST MiNT, Xenix, 386-Minix, DEC 3100, and the 3b1 Unix-pc.  Many
  small, industrial, real-time systems under OS9 or Lynx in Europe use
  (another variant of) Mgr for their user interface.  The programming
  interface is implemented in C and in ELisp, although supporting
  clients written in other languages is quite easy.

  Running MGR requires much less in resources than X, or even gcc.  It
  does not have the user-base, software repertory, or high-level
  libraries of X or MS-Windows, say, but it is quite elegant and
  approachable.

  It has been said that MGR is to X as Unix was to Multics.


  2.3.  How do MGR, X11, and 8.5 compare?

  MGR consists of a server with builtin window manager and terminal
  emulator, and clients which run in this terminal emulator and use it
  to communicate with the server.  No resource multiplexing is done.

  X11 consists of a server and clients, which usually connect to the
  server using a socket.  All user visible things like terminal
  emulators, window managers etc are done using clients.  No resource
  multiplexing is done.


  8.5, the Plan 9 window system, is a resource multiplexer, as each
  process running in a window can access /dev/bitblt, /dev/mouse and
  /dev/kbd in its own namespace.  These are multiplexed to the
  /dev/bitblit, /dev/mouse and /dev/kbd in the namespace of 8.5.  This
  approach allows one to run 8.5 in an 8.5 window, a very clean design.
  8.5 further has an integrated window manager and terminal emulator.


  3.  Installing MGR

  The latest source distribution can be FTPed from the directory
  ftp://archimedes.nosc.mil/pub/Mgr/69 or Mosaiced from
  http://archimedes.nosc.mil/Mgr/69.  The same should be found at
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/MGR and its mirrors.  Older
  versions of this distribution from Haardt can be found on
  tsx-11.mit.edu and perhaps elsewhere.  Pre-Linux versions of MGR from
  Uhler and others have been found at ftp://bellcore.com/pub/mgr, but I
  think they are gone now.  I have saved a copy of everything about MGR
  seen on the Internet, but I am not aware of anything weighty that is
  missing from this Linux/Sun distribution.  MGR has been through a lot
  of versions and releases, but the current *Linux* version number is
  0.69.  This version number could jump to 1.0 when stable 256-color VGA
  code for Linux appears (for more than one video card type).  RCS
  version numbers have increased from Bellcore's 4.3 up to our 4.13 now.

  Required tools to build this distribution of MGR are m4 (GNU, or
  perhaps another supporting the -D option), make (GNU, or perhaps
  another supporting include) and *roff for the docs.  Also sh, awk, and
  POSIX install.  Binary distributions are not assembled often so you
  need an ANSI C compiler environment, e.g. gcc.

  A Linux installation requires Linux 0.99.10 or better (1.2.13 is what
  I actually test on now), an HGC, EGA, VGA, or SVGA graphics card, and
  a mouse.  Mouses supported are: serial Microsoft mouse, serial
  MouseSystems 3 and 5 byte mouse, serial MMSeries mouse, serial
  Logitech mouse, PS/2 mouse, or a bus mouse.  With Buckey (Meta) hot
  keys enabled, even a mouseless system could do a certain amount of
  useful work under MGR.  The VGA 640x480 monochrome graphics mode is
  supported out of the box, as is 640x350 and 640x200.  To run 800x600,
  or other modes that your BIOS can initialize and which do not require
  bank-switching, you need to run a small program (supplied as
  src/vgamisc/regs.exe) under DOS or an emulator to read the VGA
  registers and write a header file which you place in the directory
  src/libbitblit/linux, so that it can be #include'd by the vga.c file
  there.  Samples of these files are supplied, but please create your
  own.  Some VGA cards can use 128k windows, and these might run higher
  monochrome resolutions.

  The Linux-colorport code also runs in the standard 320x200x256 color
  VGA mode without difficulty, because no bank switching is required.
  If you think of how few 64000 pixels is, you would realize this color
  mode is quite limited.  Non-fast, but simple, bank-switching code has
  been added in version 0.65, and it works with a Tseng ET4000 card in
  640x480x256 and 800x600x256 modes.  The S3 code does not work in super
  VGA resolutions, yet.  Supporting new super VGA cards requires writing
  one function to switch banks and then making sure that the desired
  screen mode can be initialized from a register dump, possibly with
  hand-tweaking.  The Linux color servers generally mangle the screen
  fonts, necessitating use of restorefont as in runx.  If someone were
  to extract the VGA initialization code out of X, this might make MGR
  work on a lot more color systems.

  Suns with SunOS 4.1.2+ and bwtwo, cgthree, or cgsix frame buffers are
  supported.  Their speed handling color is good.  Coherent
  installations should refer to the Versions/README.Coh file in the
  source distribution.  Porting the latest-and-greatest MGR to another
  POSIX-like system which provides select() and pty's and direct access
  to a bitmapped frame-buffer ought to be straightforward, just
  implementing the libbitblit library based on the sunmono or colorport
  code, say.

  If you want to install everything, you need 7 MB disk space for
  binaries, fonts, manual pages etc.  The sources are about 4.5 MB, plus
  object files during compilation.

  Normally, /usr/mgr should be either the directory or a link to the
  directory where you install MGR stuff for runtime use.  Typing


       cd /usr/mgr; tar xvfz whereveryouputit/mgrusr-0.69.tgz



  and optionally


       cd /usr/mgr; tar xvfz wherever/morefonts-0.69.tgz



  will unpack these.  The source can be put anywhere, e.g. typing


       cd /usr/src/local/mgr; tar xvfz wherever/mgrsrc-0.69.tgz



  to unpack the sources from archimedes.nosc.mil.

  The source tree can be compiled from one top-level Makefile which
  invokes lower-level Makefiles, all of which "include" a "Configfile"
  at the top level.  The Configfile is created by an interactive sh
  script named Configure, which asks you questions, then runs m4 on a
  Configfile.m4.  So you type something like this:



       chdir /usr/src/local/mgr
       sh ./Configure
       make first
       make depend
       make install
       make clean



  It might be wise, before running make, to eyeball the Configfile
  generated by the Configure script, checking that it looks reasonable.
  (At least one m4 poops out (Sun /usr/bin/m4), creating a very short
  Configfile.  If this happens, try hand editing a copy of
  Configfile.sun or Configfile.lx) One can also make all in any
  directory with a Makefile as soon as the libraries have been compiled
  and installed.  The server, libraries, and some clients have been
  linted, but several clients are K&R C code that generates many
  compiler warnings.

  Several flags in MGRFLAGS can be added/omitted in the Configfile to
  change some optional features in the server, viz:
     -DWHO
        muck utmp file so "who" works

     -DVI
        code for clicking the mouse in vi moving the cursor

     -DDEBUG
        enable debugging output selectable with -d options.

     -DFASTMOUSE
        XOR the mouse track

     -DBUCKEY
        for hot-key server commands without mousing

     -DPRIORITY
        for priority window scheduling instead of round-robin; the
        active window gets higher priority

     -DCUT
        for cut/paste between windows and a global snarf buffer

     -DMGR_ALIGN
        forces window alignment for fast scrolling (monochrome)

     -DKILL
        kills windows upon tty i/o errors

     -DSHRINK
        use only some of the screen ($MGRSIZE in environment)

     -DNOSTACK
        don't permit event stacking

     -DBELL
        audibly ring the bell

     -DKBD
        read mgr input from the sun kbd, instead of stdin.  This permits
        redirection of console msgs to a window.

     -DFRACCHAR
        fractional character movement for proportional fonts

     -DXMENU
        extended menu stuff (experimental)

     -DMOVIE
        movie making extension which logs all operations to a file for
        later replay -- not quite working under Linux

     -DEMUMIDMSBUT
        Emulate a missing middle mouse button by chording

  Not all combinations of these options have been tested on all systems.

  The BITBLITFLAGS macro should contain -DBANKED if you're trying out
  the super VGA color.

  C code for the static variables in the server containing icons and
  fonts is generated by a translator from icon and font files.

  Not all the clients are compiled and installed by the Makefiles.
  Clients found under src/clients having capitalized names or not
  compiled by the supplied Makefiles may have problems compiling and/or
  running, but they may be interesting to hack on.  Most of the screen
  drivers found under the libbitblit directory are of mainly
  archeological interest. Grave robbing can be profitable.

  At some point check that your /etc/termcap and/or terminfo file
  contain entries for MGR terminals such as found in the misc directory.
  If all your software checks $TERMCAP in the environment, this is not
  needed, as long as you run eval `set_termcap` in each window.

  MGR works better if run setuid root, because it wants to chown ptys
  and write in the utmp file.  This helps the ify iconifier client work
  better and the event passing mechanism be more secure.  On Linux, root
  permissions are required in order to do in/out on the screen device.
  Otherwise, you decide whether to trust it.

  In versions around 0.62 there are troubles on the Sun with using the
  csh as the default shell.  Programs seem to run in a different process
  group than the foreground process group of the window's pty, in
  contradiction to man pages and posix specs.  There is no trouble with
  bash, sh, or rc.  Ideas why?


  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.


  5.  Programming for MGR

  The MGR programmers manual, the C language applications interface, is
  found in the doc directory in troff/nroff form.  It covers general
  concepts, the function/macro calls controlling the server, a sample
  application, with an index and glossary.

  Porting client code used with older versions of MGR sometimes requires
  the substitution of


           #include <mgr/mgr.h>



  for


           #include <term.h>
           #include <dump.h>



  and clients using old-style B_XOR, B_CLEAR, et al instead of BIT_XOR,
  BIT_CLR, et al can be accommodated by writing


           #define OLDMGRBITOPS
           #include <mgr/mgr.h>



  Compiling client code generally requires compiler options like the
  following.


           -I/usr/mgr/include   -L/usr/mgr/lib -lmgr



  One can get some interactive feel for the MGR server functions by
  reading and experimenting with the mgr.el terminal driver for GNU
  Emacs which implements the MGR interface library in ELisp.

  The usual method of inquiring state from the server has the potential
  of stumbling on a race condition if the client also expects a large
  volume of event notifications.  The problem arises if an
  (asynchronous) event notification arrives when a (synchronous) inquiry
  response was expected.  If this arises in practice (unusual) then the
  MGR state inquiry functions would have to be integrated with your
  event handling loop.

  The only major drawing function missing from the MGR protocol, it
  seems, is an area fill for areas other than upright rectangles.  There
  is new code for manipulating the global colormap, as well as
  (advisory) allocation and freeing of color indices owned by windows.


  If you are thinking of hacking on the server, you can find the mouse
  driver in mouse.* and mouse_get.*, the grotty parts of the keyboard
  interface in kbd.c, and the interface to the display in the
  src/libbitblit/* directories.  The main procedure, much
  initialization, and the top level input loop are in mgr.c, and the
  interpretation of escape sequences is in put_window.c.


  6.  More documentation

  The programmer's manual is essential for concepts.

  Nearly all the clients supplied come with a man page which is
  installed into /usr/mgr/man/man1 or man6.  Other useful man pages are
  bitblit.3, font.5, and bitmap.5.  There is some ambiguity in the docs
  in distinguishing the internal bitmap format found in your frame-
  buffer and the external bitmap format found in files, e.g. icons.

  The mgr.1 man page covers command line options, commands in the
  ~/.mgrc startup file, mouse and menu interaction with the server, and
  hot-key shortcuts available on systems with such hot-keys.

  Many of the fonts in /usr/mgr/font/* are described to some extent in
  /usr/mgr/font/*.txt, e.g. /usr/mgr/font/FONTDIR.txt gives X-style font
  descriptions for the fonts obtained in .bdf format.  Font names end in
  WxH, where W and H are the decimal width and height in pixels of each
  character box.


  7.  Credit for MGR

  Stephen Uhler, with others working at Bellcore, was the original
  designer and implementer of MGR, so Bellcore has copyrighted much of
  the code and documentation for MGR under the following conditions.


      * Permission is granted to copy or use this program, EXCEPT that it
      * may not be sold for profit, the copyright notice must be reproduced
      * on copies, and credit should be given to Bellcore where it is due.



  One required showing of the copyright notice is the startup title
  screen.

  Other credits to:

  ·  Stephen Hawley for his wonderful icons.

  ·  Tommy Frandsen for the VGA linux library.

  ·  Tom Heller for his Gasblit library.

  ·  Andrew Haylett for the Mouse driver code.

  ·  Dan McCrackin for his gasblit->linux patches.

  ·  Dave Gymer, dgymer@gdcarc.co.uk, for the Startrek effect fix.

  ·  Alex Liu for first releasing a working Linux version of MGR.

  ·  Lars Aronsson (aronsson@lysator.liu.se) for text2font and an
     ISO8859-1 8-bit font.

  ·  Harry Pulley (hcpiv@grumpy.cis.uoguelph.ca,
     hcpiv@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca) for the Coherent port.
  ·  Vance Petree & Grant Edwards & Udo Munk for their work on Hercules.

  ·  Udo Munk for his work on serial mouse initialization & select.

  ·  Norman Bartek & Hal Snyder at Mark Williams Co.  for their help
     with some bugs & with Coherent device drivers.

  ·  Extra thanks to Zeyd Ben Halim for lots of helpful patches,
     especially the adaptation of selection.

  ·  Bradley Bosch, brad@lachman.com, for lots of patches from his 3b1
     port, which fix bugs and implement new and desirable features.

  ·  Andrew Morton, applix@runxtsa.runx.oz.au, who first wrote the cut-
     word code.

  ·  Kapil Paranjape, kapil@motive.math.tifr.res.in, for the EGA
     support.

  ·  Michael Haardt for MOVIE support fixes, bug fixes, separation of
     the libbitblit code into output drivers, expansion of the libmgr,
     and origami folding of the code.

  ·  Yossi Gil for many fonts.

  ·  Carsten Emde, carsten@thlmak.pr.net.ch, for mphoon.

  ·  Vincent Broman for middle mouse-button emulation, linting, Sun
     cgsix support, VGA colormap acess, integration of the sunport code
     into Haardt's layering scheme, font gathering, the screen saver,
     and continued maintenance.

  ·  Kenneth Almquist, ka@socrates.hr.att.com, for helpful bug reports.

  ·  Tim Pierce, twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu, for the port to FreeBSD
     2.0R with Trident VGA.

  All bitmap fonts from any source are strictly public domain in the
  USA.  The 583 fixed-width fonts supplied with MGR were obtained from
  Uhler, the X distribution, Yossi Gil, and elsewhere.  The Hershey
  vector fonts and the code for rendering them are probably freely
  redistributable.



