Go to the previous, next section.
With any luck, your system manager has set up SM so that you
can run it by typing a single command. She should have created a
system wide file called an ``.sm' file'. Just in case she
was negligent, or in case you want to overrule some of her choices,
you can have in addition your own `.sm' in your home directory.
This file is used by SM to tell it a number of things. A
prototype .sm
file for a VMS system is reproduced below:
device hirez
edit $disk:[sm_dir]maps.dat
filecap $disk:[sm_dir]filecap
file_type vms_var
fonts $disk:[sm_dir]fonts.bin
help $disk:[sm_dir.help]
history 80
history_file .smhist
graphcap $disk:[sm_dir]graphcap
macro $disk:[sm_dir.macro]
macro2 $disk:[lupton.sm]
name my_friend
printer qms
temp_dir sys$scratch:
term hirez
termcap $disk:[sm_dir]termcap
Now, what is all this?
device
- allows SM to initialize a default plotting device
for you. If it finds an entry of this type in your
.sm
file, it will do the call to the device
command for you.
edit
- is used by SM to find out how to map the key sequences used
by the macro and command line editor. The only reason you need to change this
line is if you decide you want to define the key sequences differently. For
example, if you invoke the macro editor (
See section What is a plot macro, and how do I make one? to find out what that means), and want to edit your macro and,
say, insert a line, to do that you
type ^M (hold down the CTRL key and then press the m key, or simply
hit Carriage Return). Now, if you don't like that particular choice
of keys, you can
set up your own key definitions in your own edit file, and tell SM
to use that instead of the default ones by redefining the
edit
line
of the .sm
file.
filecap
- is a file that tells SM how to read
2-dimensional files. As mentioned in section 11, binary files vary
enormously from operating system to operating system, and also depend
on the language of the program you wrote to generate them, so we
defined a few simple file formats you can use to read binary data into
SM, and SM interprets them via the
filecap
file.
Read the manual if you want to plot 2-D data.
file_type
- is also for 2-D data. This sets the default file type for the
binary files. The types are described in the manual
(see section 'Filecap' in The SM Manual).
The
filecap
file
tells SM how to read data of the given file_type
fonts
- This tells SM where to find the font definition file. You
will almost certainly never change this, but if you have made a new font file
you would cause SM to use it instead of the one we supply by changing
this line in your
.sm
file.
help
- This tells SM where to find the command help files.
history
- The number of history commands to remember (see the next entry).
history_file
- SM keeps of history of the commands you
used in your SM session in a file. It reads in the last
history file when you start it up again, and you can reuse those
commands as you wish (e.g. scroll through them like with the VMS
command line editor, extract a group of commands into a macro
(see section What is a plot macro, and how do I make one?), ...). If you don't want a history, leave this line blank.
Otherwise, specify a filename.
graphcap
- This is the file SM uses to figure out what magic
commands to send to your plot device to cause it to go into graphics mode. We
have defined many device types, so hopefully the one you need is already in
the default file. If not, you may want a private graphcap.
macro
- SM loads a set of default plot macros for you when
you start it up. This line gives the location of the default macro
file.
macro2
- You can load 2 default files if you wish, and this is
where you define the second one. @item macro2
is the name of a
directory where SM expects to find a file name `default',
in which are contained SM macros. You should load our default
one first, for reasons which are explained in the manual. The macro
startup2
in file `default' will be executed.
name
- This is the name by which SM will address you when you use it.
printer
- There is a macro called `hcopy' that replays the
commands used to generate a plot on your screen and changes the device
to a printer to allow you to easily get a hardcopy of your screen
plot. This line tells SM what printer you want to use. You
can also get hardcopy plots manually (see section How do I get a hardcopy of a plot?).
temp_dir
- Hardcopy plots are written to a disk file, and then submitted
to a print queue and deleted. This tells SM what directory you want
it to write the disk files to. They can be large, so if you have disk quota
problems,
temp_dir
ought to point to a scratch disk or something
term
- SM knows about terminals, and uses that
knowledge to allow you to do command line editing. Here is where you
specify what kind of terminal you have. Note this is for `text' only;
the graphics description is given in the
device
line at the start of
this file. The available terminal types are described in the termcap
entry.
termcap
- This file describes terminals.
So to run SM, you should have a file like this in your home directory,
with the directory names, etc changed to point to your computer and you, and
then just run the program. If all goes well, when you invoke the program, you
will wait a while, and then get the following message
Hello, <name>, please give me a command
where <name>
is as defined in the .sm
file name
line, and
you will get a prompt. If this isn't what happens, you need to contact the
people who installed SM on your system.
Go to the previous, next section.