SunView questions (l

[or uunet!sli!rdh]

I have several questions upon which some wizard out there could perhaps
shed some enlightenment...all issues are for Sun 3/80 8MB monochrome, OS
4.0.3, essentially run as single user (occaisionally someone rlogins to
annoy me).

This list of questions is rather long, but I've been saving them up for
awhile now...and I figure better one easily n'ed message than a bunch of
shorter ones...

1)  I am trying to run both "eyecon" and a bunch of "perfmeter"s under
SunView. They start up OK, but eventually end up in subspace. They seem to
get swapped out (when running OK, state is "S", when not responding, state
is "IW") and then forgotten by the schedular. If I mouse over to the lost
perfmeter (or eyecon) [just moving the mouse to the icon is sufficient, I
don't have to click], a brief flurry of disk and paging activity ensues
and it works again, for awhile. They are started up in the iconified
state, but so is my clock, which has NEVER gone to sleep on me. Although I
seem to recall that very occaisionally eyecon would flake out under OS
3.5, I don't remember it happening to perfmeters (in other words, the
problem is either new to or much more significant under 4.0.3 - an Ada
compile is guaranteed to nail at least one [and usually all] of 'em).
Relevant parts of my .sunview file:

  cmdtool    -Wp    0   0 -Ws 670 103 -WP    0   0 -Wl [Console] -WL console -C 
  clock      -Wp  497  32 -Ws 218  39 -WP  688   0 -Wi 
  perfmeter  -Wp  189 799 -Ws  64  48 -WP  528 852 -Wi -v cpu
  perfmeter  -Wp  189 799 -Ws  64  48 -WP  456 852 -Wi -v page
  perfmeter  -Wp  126 799 -Ws  64  48 -WP  392 852 -Wi -v disk
  perfmeter  -Wp   63 799 -Ws  64  48 -WP  328 852 -Wi -v intr
  perfmeter  -Wp    0 799 -Ws  64  48 -WP  256 852 -Wi -v pkts 
  eyecon     -Wp   72  72 -Ws 202  39 -WP    0 836 -Wi 
  shelltool  -Wp    0 103 -Ws 650 728 -WP  984   0 
  shelltool  -Wp  502 121 -Ws 650 728 -WP  1056  0 

2)  Under OS 3.5, I had ``/Tty/Bold_style "Offset_X"'' in my .defaults
which made "man" output emphasized items in "bold face" rather than under-
lining them. I have to add ``/Tty/Underline_mode "Same_as_bold"'' for OS
4.0.3 to achieve the same effect. My question is: what is the meaning of
^H_'ed text - does it mean "underline", or "emphasize" text? (I.e.,
underline, bold, blinking, italics, etc are all physical character at-
tributes, emphasis is a logical concept implemented by some physical
mapping of attributes. I assumed that ^H_'ing was emphasis.) Was the
observed 3.5 behavior merely coindidental, and the new 4.0.3 behavior
"correct" in some more global sense? Have I misdirected global graphics by
forcing underlining to bold face? (All I want is for man to use bold face,
not underlining - and most especially not reverse-video!!!. I feel like I
am using an awfully big hammer on a very small nail, running the risk of
smashing all sorts of other stuff as a side effect...) And, after all
that, why do command tool windows ignore all the settings and just output
the text totally unemphasized?

3)  And for that matter, why do command tools still not support file
recognition/completion (via ESCAPE)? Is there some fundamental philo-
sophical difference between command and shell tools [as far as users
typing Unixy commands like "man" and "ls"]? I.e., something more than
fancy editing and scroll bars and other "fluff", something that makes the
user interface to csh/etc [appear to] work radically differently?  Oh
well, guess I'll stick to shell tools...

4)  I would like to use "Left Handed" mouse key-mapping, but all I can
find is left-handing the mouse AND KEYBOARD FUNCTION KEYS. I want to map
the mouse keys (keep "select" on the "index" finger), and leave the "Lnn"
and "Rnn" keys alone. Can I do this?

4a) From playing around with defaultsedit, I would like to know the
philosophy on input_from_defaults. It is not automatically run, so once I
change something, then log out, the next person finds my left-handed
keyboard/mouse. All the other .defaults defaults seem to take action
automatically as SunView/etal start up. Is there something I need to put
in my .sunview file to run input_from_defaults? (Side issue: I run with
the Delete and Back Space keys swapped (CURSE YOU SUN!!!!!!!!!!) [Side
question: has anyone tried to pry off the keycaps and swap them?  Will
this destroy the keyboard?], and input_from_defaults unswaps the two, so I
need to run my swapBsDel krock after input_from_defaults...)

5)  TFM says not to use ^D^Q, but rather to use menu selection to quit
SunView. Why? I Hates Mices to Pieces [why do think I shove the bloody
mouse off to the left side of desk where it is out of my way? It ain't
'cuz I'm left-handed...], and prefer ^D^Q as it is faster to type, but
don't want to risk damaging something, leaving some arcane database
corrupted, or whatnot...

6)  How do I use "Meta" characters via .ttyswrc? I would like to define
(e.g.,) ``mapi F11 M-xgnus\n'' (where M-x is Meta-x). I realize that I can
"cheat" and use \Ex rather than M-x, but I'd like to know if it is
possible.

6a) Can I dynamically define (e.g.,) the Fnn keys on the fly, say from a
shelltool window. Ideally, I would hit Compose, F11, and type in the
string I wanted... (Is the Compose key used for anything?)

7)  Is there a "clean" way to run SunView if and only if you are on a
SunView'able device? Other than the usual krockitude of grepping the tty
name to guess if you're the real console or a dump terminal or
rlogin'ed... Something like:

% sunview -exitpolitelyifnotrunnignonappropriatedevicetype

or

% if (runningonappropriatedevicetype) sunview

8)  Is there any way to have windows magically warp the mouse to a useful
place when activated? E.g., after mousing across the screen to click on a
iconified shell tool, or after mousing to someplace on the screen where I
can menu my way into a new shelltool/etc, I then have to mouse all the way
back to wherever the new shelltool/etc happens to choose to appear (for
some reason, this is especially annoying with dbxtool - I guess 'cuz I
leave my icons at the top of the screen, and dbxtool's command window is
at the bottom of its window...). It would be so convenient if clicking on
or creating a shelltool left the mouse in the shelltool window so I could
type directly (ditto dbxtool, etc. - I imagine most tools have a fairly
logical "default" position for the mouse upon invocation). [I realize that
any particular windowing application can do anything it wants with the
mouse - what I would like to know is if SunView/shelltool/ etc currently
have any such option, and if so, how do I set it?]

9)  One of the things I liked about the Symbolics window system was their
way of emphasizing the selected ("keyboard focused", in SunTalk) window by
gently stipling all the other windows, rather than just changing the
window border. E.g., the "background" is nominally a 50% gray, non-se-
lected windows would be, say, 5-10% gray (which leaves them both readily
understandable and obviously not-selected), and the selected window white.
It made it so obvious which window you were typing into! Does SunView have
any such facility? Any plans/hopes for any such thing?

Many thankx in advance for any constructive answers!

					-RDH