HP OpenVMS Systems Documentation
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Common Desktop Environment: Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide

Preface

Contents of Chapter:
Who Should Use This Book
How This Book Is Organized
What Typographic Changes and Symbols Mean
This manual covers advanced tasks in customizing the appearance and behavior of the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). It includes chapters on:

  • Customizing system initialization, login, and session initiation

  • Adding applications and providing interface representations for applications and their data

  • Configuring desktop processes, applications, and data across the network

  • Customizing desktop services such as window management, printing, colors, and fonts

Who Should Use This Book

The audiences for this book include:

  • System administrators. Many of the tasks in this book require root permission.

  • Advanced users who want to perform customizations that cannot be accomplished using the desktop user interface. The desktop provides user-specific locations for many of its configuration files.

How This Book Is Organized

This manual includes the following chapters:

Chapter 1, "Configuring Login Manager," covers how to configure the appearance and behavior of the desktop Login Manager.

Chapter 2, "Configuring Session Manager," covers how the desktop stores and retrieves sessions, and how to customize session startup.

Chapter 3, "Adding and Administering Applications," covers how Application Manager gathers applications, and explains how to add applications.

Chapter 4, "Registering an Application," covers how to create a registration package for an application.

Chapter 5, "Configuring the Desktop in a Network," covers how to distribute desktop services, applications, and data across a network.

Chapter 6, "Configuring and Administering Printing from the Desktop," covers how to add and remove desktop printers, and how to specify the default printer.

Chapter 7, "Desktop Search Paths," covers how the desktop finds applications, help files, icons, and other desktop data across the network.

Chapter 8, "Introduction to Actions and Data Types," introduces the concepts of actions and data types, and explains how they are used to provide a user interface for applications.

Chapter 9, "Creating Actions and Data Types Using Create Action," covers how to use the Create Action application to create actions and data types.

Chapter 10, "Creating Actions Manually," covers how to create action definitions by editing a database configuration file.

Chapter 11, "Creating Data Types Manually," covers how to create data type definitions by editing a database configuration file.

Chapter 12, "Creating Icons for the Desktop," covers how to use the Icon Editor, and naming conventions, sizes, and search paths for desktop icons.

Chapter 13, "Advanced Front Panel Customization," covers creating new system-wide controls and subpanels, and other panel customizations.

Chapter 14, "Customizing the Workspace Manager," covers customizing windows, mouse button bindings, keyboard bindings, and Workspace Manager menus.

Chapter 15, "Administering Application Resources, Fonts, and Colors," covers how to set application resources, and how the desktop uses fonts and colors.

Chapter 16, "Configuring Localized Desktop Sessions," covers system administration tasks for systems running international sessions.

What Typographic Changes and Symbols Mean

The following table describes the type changes and symbols used in this book.