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Conference unxa::cde

Title:CDE on Digital UNIXonment - CDE
Notice:CDE on Digital UNIX - for CDE on VMS, please see Note 1.3
Moderator:UNXA::SYSTEM
Created:Tue Nov 23 1993
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:660
Total number of notes:2674

592.0. "Dtstyle "acting funny" over NFS?" by RHETT::BERRY () Tue Jan 28 1997 15:39

    Hi,
    
    I've got a customer with some minor "settings" problems with CDE.
    
    1.  Customer has NFS-mounted users.  They can bring up Style Manager on
        several different systems, but they cannot "ADD" or "MODIFY"
        existing color Schemes except on their "original" session/machine.
    
    2.  Same behavior as above except with the calendar manager.
    
    3.  She is also having problems with the keyboard.  DXKEYCAPS reports
         that
        the space bar is mapped to the "COMPOSE" key.  While it functions
        in most cases, some applications accept this mapping and do not
        function properly.
    
    4.  Her ColorMaps are "out of whack."  They do a lot of engineering
        work,
        and sometimes the colors are just run out.  She has tried the
        "-install switch, which seems to help, but does not solve it.
    
    
    It is noted that she has a ZLXP-E1 running with DIGITAL UNIX 4.0A.
    
    Are these Normal, or is there something she can change?
    
    Thanks,
    
    Lance Berry.
    
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592.1UNXA::BEUTENo good deed ever goes unpunished...Wed Jan 29 1997 10:0247
    
>>    1.  Customer has NFS-mounted users.  They can bring up Style Manager on
>>        several different systems, but they cannot "ADD" or "MODIFY"
>>        existing color Schemes except on their "original" session/machine.

I'll wager you have a mixture of 2D and 3D graphics cards on the various
systems. Here's the restriction on this in the dtstyle man page:

RESTRICTIONS

  Color palettes cannot be customized in the current version if the graphics
  adapter is running in Truecolor or Directcolor visual mode. These devices
  provide a read-only colormap. In this mode, the buttons for ``Add'',
  ``Delete'', and ``Modify'' are dimmed in the Style Manager Color dialog
  box. The workaround for creating custom color palettes is to start the X
  server in Pseudocolor visual mode by modifying the X server startup line in
  /etc/dt/config/Xservers. See the Common Desktop Environment: Advanced
  User's and System Administrator's Guide for more information on customizing
  startup files.
    
>>    2.  Same behavior as above except with the calendar manager.

The question doesn't make sense - the calendar manager does not allow
you to adjust colors. Does someone have this confused with the icon editor?
    
>>    3.  She is also having problems with the keyboard.  DXKEYCAPS reports
>>         that
>>        the space bar is mapped to the "COMPOSE" key.  While it functions
>>        in most cases, some applications accept this mapping and do not
>>        function properly.

Take a look at the man page for 'dxkeyboard'. I could see something like
this happening if someone was switching logins back and forth between
LK4xx style keyboards and PC-style models, but had info in their home
directory associated with one specific type.
    
>>    4.  Her ColorMaps are "out of whack."  They do a lot of engineering
>>        work,
>>        and sometimes the colors are just run out.  She has tried the
>>        "-install switch, which seems to help, but does not solve it.
    
Not enough info to answer intelligently. The only other suggestion which
comes to mind is the Style Manager->Colors->ColorUse selection of
"Most colors for Applications", aka the "LOW" color setting. It causes
allocation of the fewest number of colors by CDE. Beyond that, you'd 
need to know more about the specific application requirements - how much
of the 256 colormap entries do they require? 
592.2RHETT::BERRYThu Jan 30 1997 16:2044
    
>>    I'll wager you have a mixture of 2D and 3D graphics cards on the
>>    various systems. 
    
    
    1.  Ok, found out what it was here.  It may have been a mixture of 2d
        and 3d cards.  This was solved by setting the vclass to
        PseudoColor.
    
    >>>>    2.  Same behavior as above except with the calendar manager.
    
    >> The question doesn't make sense - the calendar manager does not allow
    >> you to adjust colors. Does someone have this confused with the icon
    >> editor?
    
    2.  Ok.  What I meant to imply, was that the users couldn't not alter
        anything in the Calendar Manager unless at the home session.
    
        This was fixed by editing the File-Options-Display setting. 
    
    >>3.  Take a look at the man page for 'dxkeyboard'. I could see something
    >>    like this happening if someone was switching logins back and forth 
    >>    between
    >>    LK4xx style keyboards and PC-style models, but had info in their home
    >>    directory associated with one specific type.
    
          No, and we actually reproduced this on a 255 running 4.0.  She
          keeps the CDE up consistently.  We ran dxkeycaps in /usr/bin/X11.  It
          clearly shows that the space bar is mapped to 'compose'.  Now she
          can fix this with Options, selecting the PCXAL keyboard and
          saving it.  However she has two problems with this.  The Backspace
          key no longer works.  the second is that she really wants this to
          be system-wide.  As it is, her users have to do this every time
          they change machines.
    
    4.    The color map thing.  I am assuming that the PseudoColor switch
          also helped that.  But I'm not sure.  What I was getting at was
          that she was getting some strange color schemes/mappings.  For
          example, the "tie-dye Netscape" that I have seen several times.
    
    So thanks for the suggestions they explain some things.  Now it's down
    to a keyboard thing.
    
    lb
592.3UNXA::BEUTENo good deed ever goes unpunished...Fri Jan 31 1997 11:2122
    
>>    2.  Ok.  What I meant to imply, was that the users couldn't not alter
>>        anything in the Calendar Manager unless at the home session.
>>    
>>        This was fixed by editing the File-Options-Display setting. 

OK, thanks, that's clearer. Yes, you can't assume that the local calendar
data files per system are available without some additional work.    
    
>>          No, and we actually reproduced this on a 255 running 4.0.  She
>>          keeps the CDE up consistently.  We ran dxkeycaps in /usr/bin/X11.  It
>>          clearly shows that the space bar is mapped to 'compose'.  Now she
>>          can fix this with Options, selecting the PCXAL keyboard and
>>          saving it.  However she has two problems with this.  The Backspace
>>          key no longer works.  the second is that she really wants this to
>>          be system-wide.  As it is, her users have to do this every time
>>          they change machines.
    
Try seeing if you have the same problem under DECwindows with this. The
keyboard handling logic changed with X11R6, and I suspect you may be
seeing a generic problem at that level.