GKS Names

The GKS workstation names are stored in a text file which is found by looking in turn for:

• The translation of the environment variable GNS_GNSNAMES.
• A file called gns_gksnames in a directory found by translating the environment variable GNS_DIR.
• A file called ../etc/gns_gksnames relative to each directory on the PATH.

Each line in the file describes one workstation name and contains the name, the GKS workstation type that it translates to, the device name of the workstation, a short description of the workstation and, optionally, the network node from which the device is accessible and a sequence number (see this section). The fields are separated by the slash (/) character and a complete record might look like:

      IKON_A/3200/XAA0:/Ikon Image display A/NODEA/ 1/

However, the device name field is usually blank which means that the default device associated with the workstation type is used, the node field will usually be blank as it is only used on VMS systems and the sequence number will normally be absent; so most records in the file will be more like:

      tek4010/201/ /Tektronix 4010 terminal/

An explicit device name is only required when you need different names for two or more devices of the same type.

For X window devices the device name is used as the GWM window name, and the sequence number should be left blank.

      xwindows/3800/xwindows/X Windows/

The system is distributed with a file containing a name for every workstation type supported by RAL-GKS and so will work without any modification. However, programs that list the available workstations will present users with a long list of workstation names, many of which are probably not available, so the first task is to delete from the file the definitions for devices that are not available on your system.

As well as eliminating extraneous names from listings of available workstations this will also make abbreviations more useful. For example, some of the names are somewhat unwieldy because they have to be able to distinguish between different devices made by the same manufacturer such as cifer_t5 for the Cifer T5 terminal and cifer_2634 for the Cifer 2634. If, on a system with only one sort of Cifer terminal the unwanted name is deleted, then cifer becomes an acceptable abbreviation.

Having edited gns_gksnames you should test the system by running the demonstration program described in section .