The rest of this guide will be much easier to follow if you read it while running WAVE, so that you can try out the features described. This chapter contains a five-minute exercise in which you will start WAVE, take a quick look around, and exit from it. The later chapters assume that you have been able to complete this exercise successfully - if you encounter problems here, get help before continuing.
WAVE is an X Window System client application that runs on Sun SPARCstations (under Solaris or SunOS), and on PCs running Linux. X clients communicate with an X server and a window manager, programs that handle display output, and keyboard and mouse input, on behalf of the X clients, in much the same way that the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems do for applications running on Macs and PCs. Unlike Macintosh and Windows applications, however, X clients need not necessarily run on the same computer as the X server. If your computer can run an X server, and it is connected to a network, you can use it to interact with X clients running on any other computers (``hosts'') connected to the same network. Thus you do not need to have your own SPARCstation or Linux PC in order to use WAVE, since X server software is available for almost all currently manufactured computers (including Macintoshes and Windows PCs) and many older computers as well.
You may use X server software running on your own computer to interact with a copy of WAVE running on another networked computer (the WAVE host). (Since the window manager is also an X client, it can run on any computer in the network, although it is usually run on the same computer as the X server.) If your own computer is a SPARCstation or a PC running Linux, it can act as the WAVE host, and no network connection is required.
If you don't yet have a WAVE host, see System Requirements for hardware recommendations. For information about installing WAVE, see Setup. If WAVE has already been installed on the WAVE host, proceed to the next section after filling in the worksheet on the next page (get help from an expert such as your system administrator if necessary).