The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) has already been adopted by Hewlett-Packard, Sun, IBM, Digital, and other leading vendors, and it's quickly becoming the X-based desktop of choice for UNIX users. If you're in charge of a UNIX system, chances are you're already responsible for configuring CDE desktops, or you soon will be.
Using CDE's set of controls, based on the metaphor of real-life controls such as pushbuttons and sliders, you can create an environment that's easy even for new users. You can make the technical "mechanics" of computing essentially invisible, so users can focus on their work-not the fact that they're using a computer.
But CDE's benefils are bighly dependent on how you configure it.
That's where this book comes in. It's your single source for all the information you need to configure CDE environments that are easy, consistent, intuitive and attractive.
The best way to succeed with CDE is to start with a strategy and plan. Charles Fernandez shows you how. He pressents organizing principles, timely rules of thumb, and detailed examples that show how to work with CDE's multiple configuration files to customize a computing environment that's optimal for your users.
1. How To Organize CDE Configuration Files
2. Environmental Variables
3. Working with Look-and-Feel Resources
4. Using Create Action to Make Actions and Data Types
5. Making Handmade Action
6. Making Handmade Data Types
7. Configuring the Workspace Manager
8. Configuring the CDE Front Panel
9. How Login and Session Management Work