UNIX/IRAF Site Manager's Guide

4.1. The X11 environment

The graphics and image display tools provided with IRAF operate within the X11 windowing environment much like the standard tools provided with X11. To help illustrate the use of these tools, IRAF is distributed with a sample X11 environment already configured for the IRAF account, the exact nature of these files depends on the platform. This consists, for example on a Sun/IRAF system, of the following files in the IRAF account login directory, iraf$local.

.Xdefaults: Sets up the defaults for how the window system looks, e.g., defines the X resources controlling window colors, fonts, etc.
.openwin-menu: An example of a simple custom rootmenu for the OpenLook window manager, including entries for xgterm and ximtool. Other window managers will rely on a different configuration file, e.g. ".mwmrc" for Motif, ".twmrc" for the twm window manager, etc.
.xinitrc: Executed at window system start up time to create all the windows, some systems require that this file be named .xsession.

No one screen layout will suit all users or all applications. Everyone will wish to customize the workstation screen to suit their preferences and the type of work they are doing. However, the configuration provided works and should be useful as an example of how to make things function correctly.