Puppy-How-To

Puppy How-To

Installing the NBEMS suite of applications on a Puppy distribution is really quite simple. The following describes the process for a clean Puppy 5.0 installation.

Be sure you are connected to the internet. Then open the Browser. My Puppy is set up to use Firefox, so the following is based on that browser. Enter the following in the url bar and press enter

http://www.w1hkj.com/download/html

Select the link "pet libs". The default is "Open with" petget (default) . Press OK
Click the OK button that you wish to install the package.

Repeat the above for "fldigi-3.20", "flarq-4.3", "flwrap-1.2.0" and "flics"

If you are interested in trying the beta package flmsg (future replacement for flics) change the url to http://www.w1hkj.com/alpha/flmsg/
Select the link "flmsg.pet". Follow the usual install process.

If you are interested in trying the rig control program, flrig, change the url to http://www.w1hkj.com/alpha/flrig/
Select the link "flrig.pet". Follow the usual install process.

Close down the browser

Open the Rox Filer (press the house icon named file which is on the desktop)
Press the up arrow to display the '/' directory
Select "lib" "local" "lib" "X11" "pixmaps" in that order to move to the "/usr/local/lib/X11/pixmaps" directory. You should see lots of icons including new ones just installed for all of the NBEMS applications.

Open a second Rox Filer window and drill down to the ~/my-applications/bin directory. Adjust the two views so they are both accessible on the screen.

All of the applications (except for flarq) should have an icon associated with it in the last view that was opened. The flarq installation needs to be tweaked. In the meantime you can practice associating an application with an icon. Right click on the flarq icon and select the "Set icon..." menu item from the popup menu system. When the next dialog opens be sure that "Only for the file ..." is checked. Now find the flarq-48.png icon in the /usr/local/lib/X11/pixmaps view and drag and drop it onto the "Set icon" dialog. Done! The flarq executable in the bin directory should now have the icon with the shaking hands.

Close down the /usr/local/lib/X11/pixmaps view. Keep the ~/my-applications/bin view open.

Creating a desktop icon

Is simplicity itself. Simply drag the application from the ~/my-applications/bin view and drop it on the desktop. Puppy will create a link from the desktop icon to the actual executable in the bin directory. Nothing more is needed.

You can launch any of the applications by clicking on the new desktop icon.

Flwrap will accept any of the three methods to process a file.

drag and drop the file from the Rox File viewer on to the desktop icon.
drag and drop the file from the Rox File viewer on to the "Drop file here" panel on the opened Flwrap dialog
open a console window

cd to the directory containing file to wrap (for example /root/my-documents/tmp)
enter at the command prompt: flwrap README-tmp.txt

modify the open console method for compression as

flwrap --usecomp README-tmp.txt

Advanced usage for desktop icons

Create a second flwrap desktop icon. Rename it flwrap-compress. Hint: right click is your best friend in Unix/Linux/Puppy
On the same "Edit item" dialog for the launcher you will notice a field named "Arguments to pass (for executables)". Enter the text --usecomp. Press OK when done.

You can use this same technique to pass any command line switches to the NBEMS applications. To see what switches are available for each application you can start them from a command line with the --help switch. For example

fldigi --help
will produce

Usage:
    fldigi [option...]

fldigi options:

--config-dir DIRECTORY
    Look for configuration files in DIRECTORY
    The default is: /home/dave/.fldigi/

--rx-ipc-key KEY
    Set the receive message queue key
    May be given in hex if prefixed with "0x"
    The default is: 9876 or 0x2694

--tx-ipc-key KEY
    Set the transmit message queue key
    May be given in hex if prefixed with "0x"
    The default is: 6789 or 0x1a85

--arq-server-address HOSTNAME
    Set the ARQ TCP server address
    The default is: 127.0.0.1

--arq-server-port PORT
    Set the ARQ TCP server port
    The default is: 7322

--xmlrpc-server-address HOSTNAME
    Set the XML-RPC server address
    The default is: 127.0.0.1

--xmlrpc-server-port PORT
    Set the XML-RPC server port
    The default is: 7362

--xmlrpc-allow REGEX
    Allow only the methods whose names match REGEX

--xmlrpc-deny REGEX
    Allow only the methods whose names don't match REGEX

--xmlrpc-list
    List all available methods

--cpu-speed-test
    Perform the CPU speed test, show results in the event log
    and possibly change options.

--noise
    Unhide controls for noise tests

--wfall-only
    Hide all controls but the waterfall

--debug-level LEVEL
    Set the event log verbosity

--version
    Print version information

--build-info
    Print build information

--help
    Print this option help

Standard FLTK options:

   -bg COLOR, -background COLOR
    Set the background color
   -bg2 COLOR, -background2 COLOR
    Set the secondary (text) background color

   -di DISPLAY, -display DISPLAY
    Set the X display to use DISPLAY,
    format is ``host:n.n''

   -dn, -dnd or -nodn, -nodnd
    Enable or disable drag and drop copy and paste in text fields

   -fg COLOR, -foreground COLOR
    Set the foreground color

   -g GEOMETRY, -geometry GEOMETRY
    Set the initial window size and position
    GEOMETRY format is ``WxH+X+Y''
    ** fldigi may override this setting **

   -i, -iconic
    Start fldigi in iconified state

   -k, -kbd or -nok, -nokbd
    Enable or disable visible keyboard focus in non-text widgets

   -na CLASSNAME, -name CLASSNAME
    Set the window class to CLASSNAME

   -ti WINDOWTITLE, -title WINDOWTITLE
    Set the window title

Additional UI options:

--font FONT[:SIZE]
    Set the widget font and (optionally) size
    The default is: sans:12

Whoa !! information overload !! Study each one carefully and you will find those that are of use to you. You might want to have multiple configurations for fldigi. Each one can have it's own configuration directory with the "--config-dir FULLPATHNAME" specifier.

Perhaps you don't like the default color scheme. You can change the -bg, -bg2 and -fg colors. The colors are named using standard Unix colors. Try this one:

fldigi --bg gray22 --fg thistle

Test these from the command line before you commit them to the launcher.