Customising Your NCD X-terminal

Gary Mitchell 27-Apr-1998

It is now possible for users of X-terminals at the Sea-Level Office (SLO) to customise their X-terminal. This note gives instructions

Options

To see the options

In the window entitled "NCD User Services: Console" select "Setup" > "Change User Preferences..."
There are 10 sections each of which can be unpacked and displayed by clicking on the box. The table below summarises what usefulness (if any) these might have. In most cases the interpretation of the options is obvious

Section	Comments
Keyboard	describes what happens if you hold a key down ie if the character should repeat or not and quickly. The section on under what events to light up the 4 lights on the keyboard is of little practical use.
Bell	tune the beep. Long beeps can be irratating. Having a beep which is a differeent pitch from the beep on a neighbouring terminal is useful.
Mouse	useful for determining how fast pointer moves accross screen when mouse is moved. Default is adequate fro most people.
Screen Bacground	Choose from plain solid colour or a two-colour image (Black-White or Blue-Black for example). If you want a boring grey mesh choose default. If you want an image of your choice this is possible too - but you will need to ask Gary to process it into appropriate format for which there is a fee of one tube of smarties.
Screen Saver	Please keep screen saver enabled. Bitmap allows a Black-White representation of an image. Only one image allowed. The "change Scren Saver After ... seconds" only determines how much the same image hops about (changes position) on the screen. Bright images don't save your screen much. To minimise power consumption choose "Blank" which is black with a few scattered white pixels. If you want an image of your choice this is possible - but you will need to ask Gary to process it into appropriate format for which there is a fee of one tube of smarties.
Fonts	If you need a font please ask the Computing Facilities Group (CFG) to put it into the font server. This ensures font availability in the event of any one font server being unavailable. It also enable that font to be used by all users.
X and Grpahics	not much of interest here.
Compatibility	essentially compatibility with varous bugs. Not of interest.
Console and Utilities	For the security conscious you can have your terminal lock automatically after a certain time. You pick your password which should NOT be the same as any unix account password. Such passwords can be determined by people without root privileges. (But I'm not going to say how) You can also be totally logged out terminating any applications on the X-terminal. Logging out saves system resources but shouldn't be used if you leave half-done edits unattended regularly.. Some X-terminals in public areas on the Rqoue might be logged out after 1 hour.
Audio	The Xncd19c monitors don't have proper audio outputs. They can only beep. This section is irrelevant.

Fixing the Options

After reviewing the effect (by clicking on "Apply") you can save the preferences. From the "File" menu item at top LHS select "Save to File..." In the pop-up box you must enter either

a name derived from the name of the X-terminal : slxtnn.pref where nn is replaced by 02 or 03 or whatever to give your X-terminal's name
Example
slxt02.pref
a name derived from your username : username.pref
Example
fjg.pref

If you use the x-terminal name then next time your X-terminal is power-cycled it will restore your preferences.

If you use username.pref then after power cycling your X-terminal you can use "Setup" > "Change User Preferences" "File" "Read From File" and enter username.pref in the box to restore your preferences. Reading from a file can also be used to temporarily set any X-terminal you are using to have your personal preferences.

This document is available on-line in the CFG Public Notes area:

http:www.ing.iac.es/~cfg/notes