McIDAS-X User's Guide
Version 2023.1

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Preparing a User Account

The McIDAS-X software is installed in the mcidas account. However, you can not run McIDAS-X as user mcidas. Ask your system administrator to create individual accounts for running McIDAS-X. Then, the user or system administrator must complete these two tasks for each account:

Setting the Environment

1. Log on to your user account. Update (create if necessary) your $HOME/.bash_profile (for bash) or $HOME/.zprofile (for zsh) file to include the line ". $HOME/.profile" so that .profile is sourced and thus the PATH and McIDAS environment variables that are defined in .profile and .mcenv are set each time you log on to the account.

2. Modify the environment variable PATH in your $HOME/.profile file.

3. Add the following environment variable definitions to your $HOME/.profile file to improve the behavior of cutting and pasting within the mctext window.

4. Log off and log on again for the changes to take effect.

Enabling McIDAS-X Keys

The actions required to enable certain keyboard keys used by McIDAS-X (for example, Alt A, Ctrl F11) vary depending on your workstation and its configuration. This section describes these actions for workstations running SSEC-recommended configurations.

Complete the section appropriate for your configuration. The directions assume that you are in the account's $HOME directory and logged on to the workstation console.

Enabling McIDAS-X Keys for Linux and GNOME

Complete the steps below if you use an Linux workstation console and the GNOME desktop environment.

1. Bring up the Keyboard Shortcuts window by clicking the following in order: Main Menu (in lower-left corner), Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts.

2. Highlight each shortcut associated with a key combination you want to use in McIDAS-X (e.g., <ALT>F2) and press the Backspace key to change it to Disabled. This allows McIDAS-X to use the key combination for strings and other applications.

Enabling McIDAS-X Keys for macOS and XQuartz

Complete the steps below if you use a macOS workstation console and Apple's XQuartz desktop environment.

1. Start XQuartz by double-clicking the XQuartz icon in the Applications>Utilities folder. If XQuartz is already running, click the XQuartz icon in the dock to make the application active.

2. Click the XQuartz menu at the top of the display, then click Preferences to bring up the X11 Preferences window.

3. Click the Input tab, then uncheck the checkbox labeled Enable key equivalents under X11.

Steps 1-3 allow the open-apple keys (on each side of the spacebar) to function as the Alt keys in McIDAS-X.

4. Start a Terminal by double-clicking the Terminal icon in the Applications>Utilities folder. If a Terminal is already running, click the Terminal icon in the dock to make the application active. Then use the xmodmap utility to configure a key to function as the Insert key during McIDAS-X command entry. Choose the appropriate command below, depending on whether you have a fullsize (desktop) keyboard or a laptop.

On a fullsize keyboard, run the command below to configure the help key to function as Insert. The spaces before and after the equal sign (=) are required.

Type: xmodmap -e 'keysym Help = Insert'

On a laptop, run the command below to configure the option (alt) key to function as Insert. The spaces before and after the equal sign (=) are required.

Type: xmodmap -e 'keysym Mode_switch = Insert'

This concludes the instructions for installing McIDAS-X and configuring user accounts. See Starting McIDAS-X for information about the ways to start a McIDAS-X session, and see Configuring McIDAS-X Sessions with .mcidasrc for information about tailoring McIDAS-X sessions to your preferences.


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