NAME

       togeomview - send commands or OOGL objects to geomview

SYNOPSIS

       togeomview [-c] [-g]  [pipename  [program args ...]]

DESCRIPTION

       togeomview  sends  a stream of geomview commands, or OOGL-format geometric data, to a cooperating copy of
       geomview.  If geomview is not running, it is automatically started.  ('geomview' must be on the $PATH  of
       the user running 'togeomview' in order for this to work.)

       Typical usage is:
            someprogram | togeomview    (to send commands) or
            someprogram-generating-OOGL-data | togeomview -g  (to send geometry)
       i.e.  a program pipes geometric data into ``togeomview''; the data is displayed by a copy of geomview run
       with the -M option and a name matching the one given to togeomview.

       Togeomview uses  a  named  pipe  in  the  directory  /tmp/geomview  to  communicate  with  geomview.   If
       unspecified,  the  pipe's default name is "OOGL".  When sending geometry (-g), a geomview object with the
       same name as the pipe appears in geomview's object browser.

       By default, when no suitable copy of geomview is running, togeomview invokes  "geomview"  with  arguments
       specifying the appropriate named pipe.  A different command may be specified as in:

            togeomview  OOGL  gv -wpos 300x300 -c my_startup_script

       which  communicates through a pipe named OOGL, and (if necessary) invokes the given gv command.  The pipe
       name is required if a command is specified.

       After togeomview has created it, the named pipe may be written as an ordinary  file.   For  example,  one
       could use

            togeomview pipename < /dev/null

       to   invoke   a   listening   copy   of   geomview,  and  then  run  a  program  which  simply  wrote  to
       /tmp/geomview/pipename.

FILES

       /tmp/geomview

BUGS

       The pipe-based communications scheme imposes several restrictions.

       If no copy of geomview is reading from the pipe, or if geomview gets far enough behind, a program writing
       data to ``togeomview'' will be forced to block after sending a few kilobytes.

       Because of the buffering in the pipe, the sender may be substantially ahead of the geomview display.

       If  geomview exits, the sending program receives a write-on-broken-pipe (SIGPIPE) signal, which will kill
       it unless measures are taken to catch or ignore that signal.

       Only one copy of geomview can read from a given pipe at a time.  If a second copy attempts to  read  from
       it, both will probably fail.  It's fine to have multiple copies of geomview reading from different pipes.

       Note  that  togeomview will invoke geomview if no extant copy is listening to the relevant pipe; it can't
       connect to an existing copy of geomview started by other means.

SEE ALSO

       geomview(1), oogl(5)