Index: Register, Netscape, News,
In order to tailor your account so that it can access the comp200 tools, we need to do some initial, one-time setup.
If you read the above, and aren't sure exactly how to log in to owlnet, or a particular machine like long-eared, here's some more background.
If you go up to one of the many (big-screened) workstations around campus
(e.g., the workstations in Ryon 102),
you can't use it until you log in.
But once you've typed your password, then you a presented with
a "shell window":
it has the name of the computer, a few greeting lines,
and a prompt, waiting for you type something.
(Try
If you walk up to a Mac or PC, you can also log on to owlnet: On the desktop, or under a "communications" menu, will be some programs with names of owlnet machines, like "forest", "jungle", "se" (equivalently, "short-eared"). These give you a small shell window, as described.
To log on to a particular machine: Once you are on some owlnet machine, you can type ssh se to log on to, say, se. (If you are on a PC, there also might be an icon in the communications directory, with the name of the machine you want.)
I realize these directions are a bit sketchy -- please send me mail, if you have questions, and i can arrange for some in-lab office-hours.
Newsgroups are electronic bulletin boards where everybody can post and read articles on certain topics. There is a newsgroup specifically for this course, rice.owlnews.comp200. You should read the newsgroup every day or two, as helpful hints and clarifications are posted there regularly. Also, if you have a question relating to the course, post it to the newsgroup. Similarly if you have an answer for somebody else's question!
In newsgroups, the idea is that once you've read a message, you probably don't ever want to see it again (unless you do something special). So your newsreader "marks" an article as read, and next time you read news it only presents you with unmarked articles.
There are many different new-reading programs you can choose from. Two leading contenders are Netscape and Pine, each of which makes reading news analagous to their way of reading mail.
From the comp200 web page, follow the link "The Newsgroup". This opens a separate Netscape window, with three panes: the list of newsgroups (upper left), the list of articles in current newsgroup (upper right), and the current article itself (lower). (This should be no problem from campus labs; if it doesn't work from your own computer, you try specifying the ``news server,'' which should be news.rice.edu.)
Click on an article's heading to read it, or use the Next button to go to the next unread article. You can toggle the already-read status of an individual article by clicking on the green dot next to the subject.
You can mark all the articles in the newsgroup as read by clicking on the Group button that has a picture with a bunch of checkmarks. More commonly, you will want to mark all the articles in a "thread" of conversation as read by clicking on the Thread button.
An unmarked (unread) article is shown in bold face, and has a diamond between the Sender and Subject, while a marked (read) article is in normal-font, with a dot instead of a diamond. As you read articles, you see them change from unmarked to marked.
If you want to re-read an article later (say, tomorrow), you must change it from marked back to unmarked (faking out Netscape into thinking you never saw it the first time around.)
Articles also expire after a while. For instance, you don't see articles posted three years ago, simply because the news server (the local Rice computer that gets/posts news from other computers on the net) doesn't store articles forever. How old an article has to be before it expires varies: Rice course-newsgroups tend to stay around several semesters, while articles in alt.sandwiches.pouting expire after about a week.
In the list of all newsgroups, click on a newsgroup's name to read it. Subscribed newsgroups are shown with a check to the right of their name, and unsubscribed newsgroups just have a dot; click on that symbol to toggle that particular newsgroup's subscription status.
Note that initially, only subscribed newsgroups are shown (and the course newsgroup, since you selected that one in particular to start the newsreader). Under the File menu, you can choose subscribe..., which lets you search or browse for new newsgroups. Also, under the Options menu, you can modify this by selecting either "Show all newsgroups" or "Show subscribed newsgroups".
Lots of old messages from a previous semester?
You want to mark old messages as having been read.
In netscape, this can be done with the sub/menu sequence
To post your own message to a newsgroup, make sure the newsgroup is selected, and click the To:News button in the upper left corner. You'll be put inside an editor to compose the message. When you are done, either click the Send button to post the message, or you select Close from the File menu.
Note that under the File menu of Netscape's News window, Close just closes the News window only, while Exit actually means exiting all Netscape windows.
Start DrScheme:
drscheme
in an xterm window.
(If this complains about a file not found, then register
didn't work. You can type ~scheme/bin/drscheme instead.)
For home use, you can download DrScheme.
The DrScheme window is divided into two halves. The lower half, or interaction window, is the Scheme "calculator". The top half, or definition window is merely a text editor (which is smart about indenting Scheme, and such). You probably want to do most of your typing in the top half (since you can save it), and then press the execute button, which sends everything up in the definitinos window down to the interaction window, to be evaluated.
To check: Verify that the interaction window says "Beginning Student". If it does not, from the Language menu, select Configure Language. From the menu that gives you, select Beginning Student. This makes DrScheme catch more errors for you: namely, errors which are technically legal Scheme, but are probably not what you really want early in the course.