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What do I have to do to start up SM?

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.

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