1.4 TCM and the Unix Environment

    

1.4.1 Getting Started

  TCM runs on Unix systems with X Windows version 11 release 5 or higher and uses the Motif library release 1.2 or higher for the graphical user interface. For up-to-date system requirements see the file README.TCM in the software distribution.

When you have retrieved the TCM distribution in the form of a Unix tar file compressed with the gzip program , you have to install  it in a new directory, preferably /usr/local/tcm . Each user should set the environment variable TCM_HOME to the directory where TCM resides, and add $TCM_HOME/bin to the PATH shell variable and add $TCM_HOME/man to the MANPATH shell variable. TCM will not work when TCM_HOME is not set. Do not forget to export these variables. You can start a particular tool in two ways:

  

Figure 1.2: The TCM startup window.

  

1.

Call it from the program tcm. tcm displays a window containing a push button for each available editor (see figure 1.2). To start an editor click the corresponding button. The diagram and tree editors are started up immediately. When a table editor is chosen, first a dialog is displayed in which you can change some options. Be careful, because each time you click a button a new editor is started. To kill the tcm startup program issue Quit from the File menu. The processes of the running editors are independent from the running startup program, so when you quit a startup program, all other programs continue to run.

2.

Call the editor directly from the shell, e.g. terd, tdfd, tcrd. Perhaps you want to end the command with an ampersand to run it in the background. You can supply a single document name as command line argument. If this argument is the name of an existing file then the editor tries to load a document from it. If the document does not exist, a new document is created in the editor having the argument as document name. In section 1.4.2 we give an overview of the flags that can be given in the command line and the Unix environment variables that are used by TCM.

1.4.2 Unix options, files and variables

    

The Unix manual pages in the TCM distribution give an up-to-date overview of all arguments, environment variables and files that are used by TCM. Here we will give some explanation of the most important ones. TCM has the following command line arguments:

• Filename. This will be the document name when the editor is started, instead of untitled. If the file exists and contains a valid document for the concerning editor, the document is loaded while starting up. If the file does not exist, only the document name in the editor will be modified.
• -drawing WidthxHeight.  Specifies the size of the drawing area in pixels. The default size is 1330x1330 pixels . Increasing the values makes it possible to draw bigger documents, but it can slow down the editor significantly. Smaller values make it possible to run TCM faster on a machine with little memory.
• -help.  Write all allowed command line arguments to standard output and exit.
• -maxdrawing WidthxHeight.  The drawing area can not be larger than width pixels wide and height pixels high. The default maximum values are 3000x3000 pixels. When the drawing is larger than the current drawing area, the drawing area is made larger up to this maximum. However, when the drawing area is extremely large, the editor becomes slower and may eventually crash because there were insufficient resources to allocate the background pixmap.
• -priv_cmap.  Start the editor with a private color map. Normally editors use the default color map.
• -projdir directory.  Set the project directory (working directory) to this directory.
• -version.  Write the TCM version to standard output and exit.
• In addition to these options, the standard X11 toolkit options like -background and -display are accepted as command line arguments (see the X window man page, X(1) or X11(7)).

Table editors additionally have the following optional command line arguments:

• -table RowsxColumns.  The table editor will be initialized with a table having rows rows and columns columns.
• -cell WidthxHeight.  Sets the minimal cell size of the table editor to width pixels wide and height pixels high.

In addition to the TCM tool executables themselves and shared libraries, the tools depend on the following files:

• $TCM_HOME/lib/tcm.conf.   This is the TCM system wide configuration file. This file contains initialization values for the tools, like the name of the printer, the Unix command to print a file, the default page size etc. When the user has no file $HOME/.tcmrc, then this file is read by each tool upon startup. The menu entries of the editor are initialized with the values from the configuration file. The settings in tcm.conf are already adapted to the Unix platform that you use, but, when you have installed TCM, it is maybe a good idea to check them. In the configuration file itself you find directions for how to modify it.
• $HOME/.tcmrc.   Each user of TCM can override tcm.conf by his own configuration file, which has to be installed in $HOME/.tcmrc.
• $TCM_HOME/lib/Tcm.  This file contains some X Resources. These X resources are already built-in in the tools, so this file is not read in by TCM. But you can customize with this file the fonts and colors of the Motif widgets that TCM uses, by setting these resources with different values in your X defaults database. Each string of the form ``Tcm.resource:definition'' sets a resource. See question A.19 in the FAQ for how exactly you can set X resources.
• $TCM_HOME/lib/help/. This is a directory that contains a collection of text files for the on-line help windows that are issued via the entries of the Help menu. If you have installed TCM, make sure that these help files are readable for all.
• $TCM_HOME/lib/banner.ps.  PostScript banner page that can be used when the printer does not print a banner page. To use this banner by default you have to edit tcm.conf or .tcmrc.
• $TCM_HOME/bin/psf.   A Perl script that is used to filter PostScript output written by TCM. It assumes that the Perl interpreter is in /usr/bin/perl. Otherwise, you have to edit the first line of $TCM_HOME/bin/psf to make it call your local interpreter . Psf is supplied with TCM and can be used stand alone as well, see man psf.
• $TCM_HOME/bin/text2ps.  A small program that converts ASCII text files to PostScript. It is used by TCM for printing text, for instance the on-line help pages. Text2ps is supplied with TCM and can also be used stand alone, see man text2ps.

The TCM editors depend on the following Unix environment variables.  

• TCM_HOME.  The parent directory of the directories where the TCM executables, libraries and manual pages are expected to reside. The tools will not start when TCM_HOME is not set. When TCM_HOME is set to the wrong directory, the configuration and help files can not be read, which will be reported upon start up.
• PATH.  You are advised to add $TCM_HOME/bin to your PATH.
• MANPATH.  You are advised to add $TCM_HOME/man to your MANPATH. Each tool has a short Unix manual page. E.g. man terd will show the man page of the ER diagramming tool TERD.
• LD_LIBRARY_PATH.  If TCM is installed in a directory other than /usr/local/tcm and the TCM distribution has shared object libraries , it is necessary to append $TCM_HOME/lib to this variable. Otherwise the shared libraries can't be found by TCM. In the FAQ in appendix A you will find more information about shared libraries and this variable.
• PRINTER.  The name of the default printer for printing documents. This variable overrides the PrinterName option in the TCM configuration files.

1.4.3 Graphical User Interface

    

The user interface of TCM complies for a large part with the OSF/Motif Style Guide [11]. The user interface is built from the OSF/Motif widget set [10]. The result is that user interaction through menus, dialogs, buttons, scroll bars and text areas work in the same way as other Motif applications and environments such as for instance Netscape for X Windows and CDE (common desktop environment). Only the drawing of diagrams and tables itself is quite different and this part does not make use of Motif. In any case, the TCM editors should be well-behaved under all popular X Window managers, e.g. fvwm, mwm, olwm, vtwm, twm. In [12] you find the specification of the user interaction with Motif applications in general, so it is not necessary to repeat that in this manual.

TCM looks optimal on a full color display and a resolution of at least an XVGA screen (1024x756). It should still be usable though on a black and white display and/or an SVGA screen (800x600). For more detailed information about the other system requirements of TCM regarding Motif, X Windows and Unix see appendix A.