Sorry, the described functions below are not yet implememted. If you like what we have described here, please give us your feedback. This could probably speed up the design.
The fact that there are well-defined communication channels between an X11 application and the X11 server makes it possible to capture and record all actions performed by the application user. Every movement of the mouse pointer and every hit of the keyboard can be stored and replayed later. SPICECAD makes use of this function to demonstrate the basic and advanced functions without the need to read the related manual pages.
All these demos are stored in the directory $SPICECAD_HELPDIR/demos. All demo files are zipped uzing 'gzip'. You can run every demo by performing the following steps:
Change directory into $SPICECAD_HELPDIR/demos and start the
X11 event player by typing
play_demo 3 demo_file
play_demo can be found in the same directory where SPICECAD is located.
The option '3' means that it is expected that SPICECAD and
xlab are communicating via a port which has a port number 3 integers
higher than the normal X11 port. This means, before starting SPICECAD
after having started xlab, is is necessary to set the environment
variable DISPLAY to hostname:3 instead of the 'normal' value
hostname:0 . By doing this, SPICECAD connects to xlab rather than
connecting to the X11 server. xlab captures all the communication
(drawing requests etc.) coming from SPICECAD and feeds them to the
X11 server. When establishing this connection, keyboard events and
mouse events are not sent to SPICECAD. Instead, play_demo reads
the previously recorded mouse and keyboard events and sends them
to SPICECAD. It is possible to watch what an experienced SPICECAD
user has done a few days or even weeks ago. The second argument,
'demo_file', tells which demo you want to see. Please check
directory $SPICECAD_HELPDIR/demos about available demos.
Some functions of SPICECAD can be called via hotkeys. Redraw, copying, moving, drawing new nets etc. are normally called by using hotkeys instead of using the menus. To tell the person who is running the demo which hotkeys have been pressed, it is necessary to set the 'want_hotkey_info' entry inside the setup file 'setup.spi' to 'yes'. If this has been done, an additional entry 'current hotkey' will appear inside the 'mousecommand window'
(For further information, please read chapter 'The mousecommand window'
on page ) .
So, whenever the screen changes without any menu entries selected before, please check the mousecommand window because it is very likely that a hotkey has been used to perform this action.