The COMPAS team has made an effort to make the interface similar to MS-Windows wherever possible. The following are noteworthy concepts:

• Default buttons: If you see a button with a dark border around the button text, it is a default button. Pressing the "Enter" key for this window is the same as pressing that button.
• Window organization is like many windows applications. For example, you'll notice the menu bar on many windows have items File, Options, and Help. To see what's in them, pull them down. A menu item with three dots to the right means you will be solicited for more info needed to complete the operation. When you release your mouse button on an item, you select it.

Since this release is based on MS-Windows, most operations are the same as defined for Windows:

• The left mouse button selects. Sometimes double clicking is convenient. For example, when you have queried and gotten a list of documents, double clicking brings up the detail for a document.
• Scrollbars have arrows at the ends that you can click or hold down, a bar that you can hold down and drag, and a region above and/or below the bar that you can click in to move a page at a time. Try playing with the scrollbar in this window!
• To enter text into a field, simply select the field (point and click), then type.
• To insert text into a field, select the point where you want to insert and type.
• To select (highlight) text, hold the left mouse button and sweep across.
• To delete, select text then press the "Delete" key. You can also overtype selected text as in Windows.
• To move the cursor within a window, point and click, use the TAB key, or use the "arrow" keys. Remember that the "Enter" key will activate a default button!
• There are many other "widgets" in COMPAS that you will encounter, such as radio buttons and checkboxes. Hopefully, they are intuitive enough that they will be simple to use on your first try.
• Many fields, buttons, menu items, and other controls are also selectable from the keyboard. In Windows, hold down the Alt key while typing the underlined letter of the item you want to select or the field you want to go to. In Motif, use the Alt-(underlined character) on some keyboards (e.g., PC keyboard with Xoftware or another X Server), and use (Meta key)-(underlined character) on SUN keyboards. Meta key is the "black diamond" key on either side of the space bar - for experts only! :-).

Remember the "hit ? for choices" feature from 'ascii compas'? This is implemented differently. You will see a button with a down arrow. Click on the button and a list of choices will appear. Click on the choice you want, and it goes into the field! If you wish, you may also type directly into "choice" fields. However, if you type into the system, release, or subsystem field, the other field choices will automatically be updated.

Note that window manager operations work on COMPAS windows. For example, you can resize many COMPAS windows. This is useful when you have a list of documents from a query, so that you can see the entire document titles.