Fri Jul 29 21:02:41 PDT 1994

*** NOTE ***
  Version 1.59 of wb requires changes to your .sd.tcl file.  
  The file NOTES contains a new wb script that should replace
  the one in your .sd.tcl.

This is a beta-release of the LBL 'whiteboard' for Sparcstations
running Sun OS 4.x & Solaris 2.x, DECstations running Ultrix 4.x,
SGI machines running IRIX 4.x or 5.x, DEC Alphas running OSF/1 and
386 or 486 boxes run BSDI's BSD-386 or NetBSD/FreeBSD.  However you
got it, the original came via anonymous ftp from ftp.ee.lbl.gov,
directory conferencing/wb.  Since this is an early beta, we expect
it change frequently as users find bugs & we make our fumbling
attempts to fix them.  If you got wb from somewhere other than LBL,
check LBL to see if there's a more recent version.

Before using wb, read the file NOTES from the distribution (note
especially the .sd.tcl change needed if you are running sd v1.14
or earlier) and print and read the postscript file lblwb.ps.

If you simply want a shared "whiteboard" drawing surface, you
don't need to do anything but install wb.  But wb can also be
used to export, view and annotate arbitrary PostScript files.
If you want to include PostScript images in your wb conference,
either your X server has to support Display PostScript (the DEC
& SGI X servers do) or wb has to be able to exec the public
domain postscript renderer `GhostScript'.  If you want to
render postscript with Ghostscript, it has to be installed on
your machine and has to be in your shell search path with the
name "gs".  (If you don't have Ghostscript it can be ftp'd from
prep.ai.mit.edu, file pub/gnu/ghostscript-*.tar.Z.).

While the normal version of gs will work with wb, you might
want to grab {sun,dec,sgi}-gs.Z from ftp.ee.lbl.gov.  This is
a version of gs 2.6.1 (patchlevel 4) with a change to limit
the number of colors allocated and to not allocate 'dynamic'
colors.  If you don't have these changes then (1) wb/gs will
not co-exist well with nv and (2) previously rendered color
postscript pages will change color in strange ways when new
color pages are rendered.  The LBL version of gs also includes
some bug fixes for rendering in rotated coordinate systems
and caching of font glyphs at large point sizes (such as
those used for viewgraphs).  If you would rather build your
own gs from source, the patch file LBL_GS.DIFFS can be
applied to a gs 2.6.1pl4 source.

If you want to use wb for giving seminars or lectures over
a network, you might also want to grab wbimport.tar.Z.  This
is a tool that works together with wb to sequence through
a set of slides & import scanned images or X window dumps into
a wb session.

The whiteboard tool is intended to work in conjunction with the
LBL "Session Directory" tool, sd, and the LBL audio tool, vat.
Both are available for anonymous ftp from ftp.ee.lbl.gov,
files *-sd.tar.Z and *-vat.tar.Z.  You might also want to
get the network video tool, nv, developed by Ron Frederick at
Xerox PARC.  It is available for ftp from parcftp.xerox.com,
file pub/net-research/nv*.tar.Z.

These tools will work for point-to-point communication but they
will be most useful in an environment that supports IP multicast.
The SGI and Solaris 2.x kernels come from the vendor with multicast
support.  Ultrix and SunOS 4.x do not.  If your kernel doesn't
support IP multicast, you can ftp the necessary support from host
gregorio.stanford.edu, files vmtp-ip/ipmult-*.  You might find
it useful to get connected to the Internet's multicast backbone,
the MBone (ftp mbone/faq.txt from venera.isi.edu for information).

SGI Notes
---------
There is a serious bug in the Irix 5.x Display Postscript server
that wb seems to trigger:  Either your display will lock up completely
or your X server will crash & you will be logged out.  SGI has known
about the bug for at least a year & may one day decide to fix it
(don't hold your breath).  A work-around seems to be to run xpsview
once, just after you log in.  This will initialize DPS & wb then
seems to run without problems.  A better work-around might be to use
ghostscript instead of DPS.  If gs is installed on your machine, just
put "wb.UseDPS: false" in your .Xdefaults.

Solaris-2 Notes
---------------
There is a bug in Solaris-2.3 that prevents wb from working in unicast
mode.  There is a work-around for the bug on playground.sun.com in
pub/solaris2/unicast-vat-workaround.tar (wb uses same work-around as
vat).  Solaris-2.4 appears to have the bug fixed.


Please let us know of any problems, bugs or suggestions for
improvement via email to wb@ee.lbl.gov.  Thanks.

   Van Jacobson (van@ee.lbl.gov)
   Steve McCanne (mccanne@ee.lbl.gov)

          -----------------

The development of `wb', `vat', and `sd' were supported by
the Director, Office of Energy Research, Scientific Computing
Staff, of the U.S.  Department of Energy under Contract No.
DE-AC03-76SF00098.
