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NAME
     xnetlib - an X interface to netlib

DESCRIPTION
     Xnetlib is a new version of netlib recently developed at the
     University  of  Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
     Unlike  netlib,  which  uses  electronic  mail  to   process
     requests  for  software,  xnetlib uses an X Window graphical
     user interface and a  socket-based  connection  between  the
     user's  machine  and  the  xnetlib server machine to process
     software requests. Xnetlib is available to  anyone  who  has
     access to the TCP/IP Internet.

OPERATION
     When xnetlib starts up you are shown the Help screen. Press-
     ing  the  top  row  of  buttons  switches from mode to mode.
     Clicking on 'Library' displays  the  top  level  listing  of
     items available via xnetlib. You may think of this top level
     listing as a set of UNIX style directories. Clicking on  any
     of them displays the contents with description. There may be
     further subdirectories, these are indicated  by  the  folder
     icon. Files are indicated by the dog-eared page icon.

     Clicking on a file adds it to the list of files to download.
     Click 'Download' to actually get the files.

     As you walk the netlib tree, examining the libraries you are
     interested  in,  index  files  are  obtained from the netlib
     server at Oak Ridge National Laboratory,  (netlib.ornl.gov).
     Depending  on your network connection this file grabbing may
     be hardly noticeable or a terrible inconvenience.

     Clicking on `Conferences' takes  you  into  the  Conferences
     Database  mode.  This mode is an experimental interface to a
     more general database service based on the relational  data-
     base  model.   The attribute names for the conferences rela-
     tion in the conferences database include title,  start_date,
     end_date, location, description, submit_date, and submitter.
     At the time when a conference is submitted to the  database,
     the title, location, and description attributes are added to
     a full-text index.  Although it is currently  incomplete,  a
     geographical  database  handles location name aliases (e.g.,
     Great Britain and United Kingdom) and hierarchical geograph-
     ical relationships.

     If you would like, you can have all the index  files  loaded
     while you're out getting a bite instead of as you need them.
     Click 'Set Up', then 'Press to Check Each Index File'.  This
     checks every index file older than a certain age (see index-
     Lifetime, in X RESOURCES) and copies  from  the  server  any
     that  are  missing or changed.  These index files are stored
     in $HOME/xnlPath by default (see xnlPath, in X RESOURCES).



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     If several people at the same site are  using  xnetlib,  you
     may  want  to  maintain one shared collection of index files
     instead of several separate collections. To do this set  the
     publicData resource to True and have users set their xnlPath
     resource to that directory. The effect of  the  'publicData'
     resource  is  that the xnlData directory and files in it are
     world writable so that anyone may  update  the  files.  (You
     might  even  set  this as the default in the source. See the
     fallback_resources in main.c.)

PLATFORMS
     Most development of xnetlib is being done on an IBM  RS/6000
     running  the  X11R5 server and libraries. It has been tested
     on Sun, Decstation 5000, SGI 4D/25 running IRIX  3.3.3  with
     X11R4, Sequent, NeXT Dimension (w/CoExist), HP9000, and Con-
     vex.

     Please tell us about other environments it runs (or doesn't)
     under.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
     General FTP support - with or without special index files on
     the remote machine.

     Fortran to C converter access via xnetlib.

     Other such facilities.

     More.

     Please send us your comments. (xnetlib@cs.utk.edu)

A ONE LINER
     We have included a command line interface to netlib. It  was
     a last minute sort of thing and has not been well tested. To
     make it, type:

     make netlibget

     Type 'netlibget' to see the usage line. Netlibget  uses  the
     same routines to talk to netlib that xnetlib does.

     You may not want to use this for file retrieval now that the
     main respository is open to anonymous ftp and rcp.

X RESOURCES and COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
     Xnetlib understands the normal X Toolkit options  (-display,
     -rv,  etc)  as  well as -help, and those listed here next to
     the X resources they affect.

     indexLifetime (-life):
        this is how many days you  want  to  use  an  index  file



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        before checking that it is current. No check will be made
        of the file with the server if it is  younger  than  this
        age.  If  set to zero, the server will be asked about the
        validity of  each  index  when  it  is  referenced.   The
        default is 7 days.

     It is worth going on a bit about some side-effects of index-
     Lifetime.  The  value  of indexLifetime determines how often
     xnetlib talks to the server. If it is set to some very large
     number,  there  will  be little unneeded communication.  The
     tradeoff there is that you might be looking at out  of  date
     index  files.  If  it is set to some very small number (like
     zero), you have to wait while the server is consulted before
     each index is read.

     A nice medium would probably be to run xnetlib with  a  high
     indexLifetime  and  every  now and then start it up with the
     -life 0 option and spin through all the index files  in  Set
     Up mode.

     hostFile (-f,-file):
         Name of host file, The default is $HOME/.xnetlibHosts.

     email (-email):
        Your prefered email address. Please set this value so you
        can be notified of updates to the software you get. If it
        isn't set, xnetlib tries to guess but will be wrong about
        1/3rd of the time.

     entrySep (-es):
        the separator displayed between entries in Who mode.  The
        default is '-------'.

     printCommand (-pc):
        the format string for the print command.  The string must
        contain  a %s which is replaced with the name of the file
        which is printed. The default is 'lpr %s'.

     showWhoInfo (-showwho/-noshowwho):
        whether to show instructions for adding your name to  the
        NA-NET white pages database. The default is True.

     xnlPath (-dp):
        path to  the  local  xnetlib  database.  The  default  is
        $HOME/xnlData.

     publicData:
        if True, save index files world writeable. The default is
        False.

     xnlDownloadPath (-path):
        path  to  directory  where  the  files  you  select   are



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        downloaded. The default is $HOME/xnlFiles

     depCheck (-dc/-nodc):
        if True then any files required by the items  you  expli-
        citly request are downloaded also. The default is True.

     showDownloadAnyway (-showdown/-noshowdown):
        if True then the Download button is not greyed  out  when
        there is nothing to download. The default is False.

     confirmQuit (-cq/-nocq):
        if True you are asked if you truly want to exit when  you
        press the Quit button. The default is False.

     dontWarp (-dw):
        sometimes xnetlib tries to help you out  by  placing  the
        cursor  where  it  thinks you may want it. Set to True if
        you don't care for this type of behavior. The default  is
        False.

     These colors affect the status message window background:

     okColor:
        the happy color, normally green

     badColor:
        the 'something's wrong' color, normally red

     cautionColor:
        the 'something's almost wrong' color, normally yellow

     Gas gauge resources.

     dial:
        the  indicator   background   color.   The   default   is
        DarkViolet.

     needle:
        the indicator color. The default is yellow.

     ef:
        the color of the E and F. The default is red.

     gasGauge.background:
        the color of the gauge background.

BUGS
     Please send bug reports to (xnetlib@cs.utk.edu). Include  as
     much  information  as possible, vendor and model, version of
     X, make logs, etc.





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     On Ultrix, you MUST either have MIT X windows  (not  DECWin-
     dows)  installed,  OR  have the "Unsupported X11 Components"
     software subset loaded, in order to  compile  Xnetlib.   The
     include  files supplied with vanilla DECWindows are incompa-
     tible with those supplied by MIT and required by Xnetlib.

AUTHORS
     This work is directed by Jack J. Dongarra, Univ. of  Tennes-
     see  and  Oak  Ridge National Laboratory, and Tom Rowan, Oak
     Ridge National Laboratory, supported in part by the  Applied
     Mathematical  Sciences  subprogram  of  the Office of Energy
     Research, U.S. Department  of  Energy,  under  contract  DE-
     AC05-84OR21400,  and in part by the National Science Founda-
     tion under contract NSF ASC-9103853.

     Xnetlib has evolved over a period of time since 1991 and has
     had help from: David Bolt, University of Tennessee; Jennifer
     Finger, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Stan Green, Bob  Man-
     chek,  Keith Moore, Andy Pearson, Bill Rosener, Jon Richard-
     son, University of Tennessee; Andrea Van Hull,  Northwestern
     University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

     Xnetlib 2.0-3.4 was written  by  Reed  Wade,  University  of
     Tennessee (wade@cs.utk.edu)

     The Performance Database module was written by Brian Larose,
     University of Tennessee (larose@cs.utk.edu).

     The Conferences  Database  module  was  written  by  Shirley
     Browne, University of Tennessee (browne@cs.utk.edu).

     Fasthelp code from:  Ken  Bateman,  Virginia  Tech  and  Oak
     Ridge National Laboratory

     A very special thanks to victims of the prerelease code.

     Convex fixes from:  salevin@drl.mobil.com


















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