Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!husc6!endor!kochhar
From: kochhar@endor.harvard.edu (Sandeep Kochhar)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Using dxterm from a Sun
Message-ID: <3081@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 7 Nov 89 03:28:47 GMT
References: <1989Nov5.172759.28565@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <3843@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: kochhar@speed.UUCP (Sandeep Kochhar)
Organization: Aiken Computation Lab, Harvard University
Lines: 37

In article <3843@sbcs.sunysb.edu> paco@sbgrad5.UUCP (Francisco J Romero) writes:
>When I try to open a dxterm or some other DEC-specific applications on
>my Sun, the call fails with some strange message about loading fonts. It
>even dumps core, depending on the particular application.  Can anybody
>help.  I tried to open the DEC fancy calendar program people have been
>talking about on my Sun screen, but it failed badly. Does anybody know why?
>

We too had this problem; the problem is that certain dec specific
fonts are non-existant on the standard mit distribution.  IMHO, a
well-written application should use some default font if a particular
font is missing; this is what the initial message from dxterm and
other dec applications says (e.g. 'so-and-so font missing, using
fixed...') -- however, the applications crash after that message,
suggesting that they continue to try to use the non-existant fonts.
(Maybe newer versions of decwindows fix this 'feature'.)

Anyway, the best solution would be for dec to supply bdf versions of
their fonts so we could build snf versions for the suns  (anyone 
listening?).  Meanwhile, this line in the file .DXterm works
for us:

DXterm*littleFontSetName:   -adobe-courier-medium-r-*--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1


Also, for some other applications, something similar to the following
would help:  (in .Xdefaults)

	*font: variable

Hope this helps.

Sandeep Kochhar
(617) 495-3988              mail: kochhar@harvard.harvard.edu
Harvard University                kochhar@harvard.csnet
33 Oxford st,                     kochhar@harvard.uucp
Cambridge, Ma 02138               kochhar@harvard.bitnet