Starting PADE

PADE is invoked with the command

pade [ filename]

The filename is optional; if present it must be the name of a PADE data file saved during a previous session.

If the file .paderc is present in the user's home directory, PADE will read this file to set some internal variables. The .paderc file is written at various times during the execution of PADE. The user is not required to create or edit this file outside PADE. The .paderc variables are:

• CONFIRM -- either On or Off for confirmation dialogs; set in the Set Preferences menu (see Section 5.4).
• FILE_PATH -- the directory where the file browser comes up; set in the Set Preferences menu.
• LAST_PVMMAKE -- time when PVMmake was last run; set whenever PVMmake is run from PADE.
• TERM -- user's favorite term command, such as xterm ; set in the Set Preferences menu.
• WWW -- user's favorite WWW browser command; set in the Set Preferences menu.
• APP n where n is an integer -- applications that can be launched from PADE; set in the Apps menu (see Section 5.11).

Menus use the left mouse button. Menus can be torn off by selecting the dashed line so that they do not disappear after making a selection. This opens a new window containing the menu, which can be closed or terminated in the usual way for your window manager.

There are accelerator keys for some of the menus. For example, Cntl-o opens a new file (see Figure 5.2). All menu items that have an accelerator key have the control sequence next to the menu item.

Buttons are disabled for any actions that cannot be performed, either because of missing optional software (for example, XPVM ) or because of the current configuration state (for example, PVMmake cannot be run until the PVMmake config file has been selected).