What's in the
Menus
The menu bar at the top of each Sun is a menu that works
similarly to the normal PC or Mac pull-down menus. There are
3 types of items in the menus:
-
Grayed-out items which are not available at this time.
-
Selections with an asterisk next to them
which are programs that can be run from the menu.
-
Selections without an asterisk next to
them which are programs that can be run from a command
line.
Tap Applications
Some of the menu items will not bring up a program like you
would expect. These are the Tap Applications. Instead of
starting the application they will open up a dialog box with
a help screen in inverse text. This help screen usually
contains commands that can be run on the command line and
possibly some instructions on how to use them. Clicking on
the menu item will also bring up a new xterm window. The
commands from the dialog box must be typed into that xterm
window and not one of the user's normal xterm windows. The
reason for this is that the path and other environment
variables are set differently by the dash menu item. You can
also set the environment for a Tap application in any xterm
by typing,
Tap application
Why Do
My Windows Dissapear?
Some of the applications on the dash menu are set up to start
their windows on a specific desktop. When a user opens one of
these applications, fvwm will automatically change to that
desktop and open the window there. This means that the old
windows will not currently be visible. Check to make sure
that there aren't any windows on any of the other virtual
desktops. This is done simply by clicking on the toolbar in
the bottom right of the screen.
Why is the Dash Menu Bar
Missing?
Sometimes the menu bar can be missing for one reason or
another. The most probable cause of this is that a user has
been playing around on the menu and has chosen the "Hide
Menus" entry on the menu. If the menu bar is missing, first
try moving the mouse to the top of the screen. If this
doesn't work, open an xterm and at the prompt, type
dash -show
Restarting Dash
There exists the possibility that you may experience problems
with the DASH menu system in which case you need not reboot
the machine, but only restart DASH. This can be accomplished
by selecting Dash from the pull down menu and highlighting
"Restart Dash". This will restart the dash menu but NOT any
of the programs currently running on the virtual desktop.
Getting
Help on Dash
Most of the menu items have a question mark to the right of
them. Clicking on the question mark of any given menu
selection will bring up some very brief help on that item. In
the case that it has an asterisk, this usually just tells you
what the item does. In the case that it does not have an
asterisk it usually gives the command you can type at a
prompt. For more information you can read the man pages on
dash.
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