Description of SAS in the X Environment

The X Window System is a networked windowing system. If several computers are on a network, you can run an X server that, in turn, serves X applications (as clients) from all the other computers in the network.

In UNIX environments, SAS features an X Window System interface that is based on Motif. This interface uses the window manager on your system to manage the windows on your display. Any window manager that is compliant with the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM) can be used with the Motif interface to SAS. Vendors provide at least one window manager with the X Window System environment. A common window manager is the GNOME. KDE is an alternative window manager. You should read the documentation that is supplied by the vendor for the window manager that you are using.

All window managers perform the same basic functions, but they differ in their style and in their advanced functions. The appearance and function of the interface to SAS depends to some extent on your X window manager. Most window managers provide some type of frame around a window. The window manager also governs the placement, sizing, stacking, and appearance of windows, as well as their interaction with the keyboard. The basics of interacting with SAS are the same for all window managers: opening menus, moving windows, responding to dialog boxes, dragging text, and so on.

When you run SAS on an X workstation, SAS shares the display with other X applications, including other SAS sessions. To enable you to distinguish between different applications and SAS sessions, SAS generates a SAS window session ID for each session by appending a number to the application name, which, by default, is SAS. This session ID appears in the window title bar for each SAS window and in the window icon title. The SAS sessions are assigned sequentially. Your first SAS session is not assigned a number, so the session ID is SAS; your second SAS session is assigned the session ID SAS2, and so on. Although the default application name is SAS, you can use the -name X option or the -title X option to change the instance name. The instance name can be up to 64 characters long and is displayed in the case in which it was entered, which can be lowercase, mixed case, or uppercase.

When you use SAS on an X workstation, the display might be shared by many concurrent applications. When SAS windows from different sessions and windows from other applications appear on the display, the display can become cluttered. To help alleviate this problem, the windows for a SAS session first appear within an application workspace (AWS). The AWS defines a rectangular region that represents a virtual display in which SAS windows are initially created. SAS attempts to position the AWS in relation to the upper left corner of your display. In other words, the workspace gravitates toward a certain direction (session gravity) on the display. Some window manager configurations might override the placement that SAS has chosen for a window.

If you issue windowing commands or execute SAS procedures that create new SAS windows, the same rules of initial position and size apply to these windows: they are initially placed in the SAS AWS. You can use the WSAVE command to save the current window positions (or geometry). For more information, see Customizing Session Workspace, Session Gravity, and Window Sizes in UNIX Environments.