57 lines
2.9 KiB
Plaintext
57 lines
2.9 KiB
Plaintext
What is faces?
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This is the third general release of a "faces" server for monitoring a
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list visually. Typically this is a list of incoming mail messages, jobs
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in the print queue or users on a system.
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Faces has five different modes of operation:
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(a) The default will monitor for new mail. By default, only the last ten
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messages are displayed. Using the left mouse button it is possible to
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toggle the text in the faces window. This will either be the username
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or the time the mail message arrived. The icon shows the image of the
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last message to arrive.
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(b) You can monitor the whole of a mail file. The open window will
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automatically adjust it's size to correctly show the face icons. The
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open window options are the username or the timestamp and number of
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message from that user. The icon will display the image of the last
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message, and a count of the total number of messages in the spool
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file or mail folder.
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(c) Monitoring a given print queue. This will generate a single face icon
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showing the job at the top of the print queue, and the text message
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will display the printer name plus the number of jobs to be printed.
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Opening the window will show images of all the jobs in the queue. The
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text on each image can be toggled, choices being the owners' name and
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the size of the job in bytes.
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(d) Monitoring users on a machine. For each user, a face image is displayed.
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Text can be either the username or the time they logged on. The iconic
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form displays the total number of users.
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(e) Custom monitoring. You can specify a program or shell script to run.
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The standard output from this program will be read by the faces program,
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and the appropriate faces displayed using the information provided. The
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format of this face information is given in the faces manual page.
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Included with this release, is the ability to include a face image with
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your mail message using an X-Face header line (plus continuation lines).
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Faces expects this line to be in a certain compressed format, and
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uncompresses it, and displays that image on-the-fly. There is also an
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option to automatically update the faces database with this new image.
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Audio capabilities are also provided as a conditional compilation option.
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By default, after every sixty seconds, faces will recheck the mail file or
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the print queue. If the mail spool file has changed size, it will produce a
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chain of records for which it has face icons.
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This release contains graphical interfaces for NeWS, SunView, X11 and XView.
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Faces is based on the AT&T v8 face server called vismon, but is not derived
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from vismon sources. With the previous version came vismon compatibility.
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Note that resulted in a few changes from the way faces v1.1 worked.
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See the manual pages for more details.
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