Typical usage is:
someprogram | stuff fred geomview -M fredi.e. a program pipes geometric data into ``stuff''; the data is displayed by a copy of geomview run with the -M option and a name matching the one given to stuff.
This version of stuff uses a named pipe to communicate with the viewer. By default, the named pipe is created in the directory /tmp/geomview. The -M option specifies an alternate directory.
If no copy of geomview is reading from the pipe, or if geomview gets far enough behind, a program writing data to ``stuff'' 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 (SIGPIPE) 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.