What is xcb? ============ Do you ever wish you could cut two or more separate pieces of text at once from a window? Do you ever need to save the output from one command for reuse in several subsequent tasks? Do you ever find yourself wanting some easy means of globally exporting data, e.g. to a parent shell, to another xterm or application, or to another machine or user? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then xcb is for you. Xcb provides access to the cut buffers built into every X server. It allows the buffers to be manipulated either via the command line, or with the mouse in a point and click manner. The buffers can be used as holding pens to store and retrieve arbitrary data fragments, so any number of different pieces of data can be saved and recalled later. The program is designed primarily for use with textual data. What is so good about this release? =================================== Release 2.3i add I18n and Unicode support to the base xcb. It also supports more formats, so applications requiring compound text for example work. You cna also paste utf-8 and japanese text... Release 2.3 fixes a bug found in the XView code that prevented data from being pasted from xcb to XView applications such as cmdtool. The release also adds a Motif GUI, selectable as a compile-time option. Now you can choose between the Athena or the Motif look and feel. Yes, but has it been ported to WHIZ-IX 12.1A.00x, on SRS-80 27-bit CPUs? ======================================================================== Xcb has been ported to a wide variety of sites and systems. In no particular order, the machines and operating systems known to be running xcb include:- o OSx (5.1a) - Pyramid MIS-2/02 o DC/OSx (1.0) - Pyramid MIServer-S 1/32 r3000 o AT&T SYSV (SVR3.2, SVR4) - i386, DG Aviion 5200 o HP-UX (lots of versions) - HP 9000s o SunOS (4.1) - Sun3, Sun4, Solbourne Series5, SPARCstations o SPARC/OS (1.1) o Solaris (2.1) - SPARCstations o Irix (4.0, 5.2) - SGI o ULTRIX (4.2) - DECstations o UNICOS (6.1) - Cray Y-MP o ConvexOS (10.0.2) - Convex 3100 o DYNIX (V3.0.17.10) - Sequent Symmetry S81 o AIX (3.2) - RS6000 o RISC/os (4.52) - MIPS o Domain/OS (10.4) - Apollo DN3000, 3500, 4500, 5500 o Linux (lots of versions) - i486 o VMS (5.5) o DGUX (5.4.2) - AViiON mc88100 o Dynix/ptx (1.3) - i386 Xcb has been written to compile using both ANSI and non-ANSI compilers. It is in use in X11 R3, R4, R5 and R6 environments. The current version uses either the Athena widgets (libXaw.a) or the Motif widgets (libXm.a), plus the X Toolkit library (libXt.a). Ok, where is it available? ========================== This version is a branch of the original xcb sources. It's homepage can be found at http://xcb.plan9.de/ So, it will compile, will it? ============================= Yes! The makefiles will, by default, build the Athena widgets version of xcb. If you prefer Motif, you should adjust the $(GUI) definition to be -DMOTIF. In addition, if you wish to cut and paste text between xcb and XView applications, you should also add the -DXVIEW flag. AT&T SVR4 sites need libnsl.a during linking. If you are using SVR4, and you don't like Imakefiles, you will need to add -lnsl to the LIBS in Makefile.std. HP-UX users may find that the Athena widgets are not installed on their machine, even though the components are freely available as part of the MIT X11 distribution. There is an HP maintained, but unsupported, set of X11R4 libraries and utilities (including the Athena widgets) for the HP 9000 Series 300, 400, 700, and 800. You can get the libraries, include files, and config files (imake) via anonymous FTP from hpcvaaz.cv.hp.com (15.255.72.15) - look for pub/MitX11R4/libs.s*00.tar.Z AIX 3.2 users may find their Athena components are installed in a non-standard place. Check the directory /usr/lpp/X11/Xamples/lib/Xaw. VMS and ULTRIX users may find their Athena components are installed in a non-standard place too. Check the directory /usr/include/mit for the Athena include files. And how do I set the thing up? ============================== That is pretty easy too. Once you have compiled the program, you can start using it straight away - just put it in your favourite bin directory. The program contains a minimal set of fallback resources so that it will behave itself even if there are no X resource specifications for it to feed on. To install the program, plus its application defaults file, and the man page, simply type 'make install install.man', after checking the target directories for the install in the Imakefile/Makefile.std. Who is to blame? Where do I send complaints? ============================================= Blame me. If you have any bug reports, porting problems, comments, more comments, suggestions, patches, unwanted cash etc. please tell me. I can be reached at the email address below. Marc Lehmann <pcg@goof.com> Feb 2001 ;) I couldn't reach the original author, who wrote most of xcb, but your mileage may vary. Xcb was originally brought to you by: Better still, if you really like xcb, send me a postcard! (to P.O. Box 213, Belgrave, Victoria, Australia. 3160). Enjoy. Farrell McKay (Farrell.McKay@mpx.com.au) Nov 1994
