Up: Intallation Instructions

Customizing StageTools:

The StageTools suite has been designed so that it is possible to customize many of its features. There are three main methods:
  1. Setting X resources in a user's .Xdefaults file;
  2. Setting up an initialization file in a user's home directory;
  3. modifying the TCL code in the StageTools directory.
The first method is useful for the user who wants to individualize the appearance (fonts, sizes, widget geometry, etc.) of the StageTools modules. There is a wide range of X resources set up specifically for such purposes (see the x resources section). There are also resources that can be used to specify the user's preferred image viewer, web browser, etc. Using X resources is the easiest way to customize the StageTools.

The second method allows more advanced users to make more extensive changes to the StageTools modules. Each module reads an initialization file from the user's home directory when it starts up. For example, StageManager looks for ~/.StageManager and executes it if it exists. These initialization files are TCL files that can do pretty much anything you want: they can set the default values for menu choices, change the appearance of windows, even replace internal commands with customized versions. See the section on user customization for more information.

Finally, the third method makes it possible to perform system-wide customization. This will not usually be necessary, except perhaps to set the default fonts, sizes, etc. The other reason to make such changes is to specify the unix commands that will be used to convert image formats and to combine images into MPEG movies and animated GIF files. See customizing the external commands for more information.

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Created: Aug 20 1997 --- Last modified: Aug 20 1997