xgterm provides an interactive graphics facility similar to the old SunView program gterm, with the addition of color graphics and the full window crosshair cursor that many users missed when they switched to X and xterm. But the full capabilities of xgterm are in its use as a ``widget server'' for GUI (graphical user interface) applications such as those being developed for IRAF. This new capability will be explored further in the next issue of the IRAF Newsletter.
ximtool has many of the features of the old imtool program (including the 4 frame buffers) but it also has many enhancements including pan and zoom windows and a control panel. The xtapemon program provides a mechanism for tape users to monitor what the tape device is doing during reading or taping. Documentation for these programs is available with the package distribution (see below), and users are encouraged to read these documents to explore the full capabilities of these new tools.
ximtool can be used with any version of IRAF. Simply replace the display server that you are currently using in X with ximtool. (See accompanying Hints... article for further details.) xgterm can be used with older versions of IRAF as well as with non-IRAF graphics programs (such as Mongo or SuperMongo) in xterm emulation mode---see the xgterm documentation for details. V2.10.3BETA users should remember to type "stty xgterm" at the CL prompt, or better yet, put this command into the login.cl or loginuser.cl file.
A new version of the X11IRAF package is being released as this Newsletter goes to press. This latest release is primarily a bug-fix release. Anyone running earlier versions of these programs will want to update to this latest version. Look in the pub/v2103-beta directory on iraf.noao.edu. Precompiled binaries taken from our SunOS and Solaris development platforms are provided. Support for platforms other than Sun (our development system) will follow when IRAF V2.11 is released, however, anyone can get the sources now and build these on their favorite platform. This software is still under development and additional updates are planned.
Doug Tody
This document was translated by ms2html v1.8 on 21Jan95.