.TH TOGEOMVIEW 1gv "21 May 1993" "Geometry Center"
.SH NAME
togeomview \- send commands or OOGL objects to geomview
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBtogeomview\fP [\fB\-c\fP] [\fB\-g\fP]  [\fIpipename\fP  [\fIprogram args ...\fP]]
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBtogeomview\fP 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:
.in +5
.nf
\fIsomeprogram\fP | \fBtogeomview\fP    (to send commands) or
\fIsomeprogram-generating-OOGL-data\fP | \fBtogeomview -g\fP  (to send geometry) 
.fi
.in -5
i.e. a program pipes geometric data into ``\fBtogeomview\fP''; the data
is displayed by a copy of geomview run with the \fB\-M\fP option and
a name matching the one given to \fBtogeomview\fP.
.sp
\fBTogeomview\fP uses a named pipe in the directory \fB/tmp/geomview\fP to
communicate with geomview.
If unspecified, the pipe's default name is "OOGL".
When sending geometry (\fB\-g\fP), a geomview object with the
same name as the pipe appears in geomview's object browser.
.sp
By default, when no suitable copy of geomview is running, \fBtogeomview\fP invokes
"geomview" with arguments specifying the appropriate named pipe.  A different command
may be specified as in:
.sp
.ti +5
togeomview  OOGL  gv -wpos 300x300 -c \fImy_startup_script\fP
.sp
which communicates through a pipe named OOGL, and (if necessary) invokes the
given gv command.  The pipe name is \fIrequired\fP 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
.sp
.ti +5
\fBtogeomview\fP \fIpipename\fP < /dev/null
.sp
to invoke a listening copy of geomview, and then run a program which simply
wrote to /tmp/geomview/\fIpipename\fP.
.SH FILES
/tmp/geomview
.SH BUGS
The pipe-based communications scheme imposes several restrictions.

If no copy of \fBgeomview\fP is reading from the pipe,
or if geomview gets far enough behind, a program writing data to
``\fBtogeomview\fP'' 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
(\fBSIGPIPE\fP) 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 \fBtogeomview\fP 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.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
geomview(1), oogl(5)