Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!RAND.ORG!salzman%gaucho From: salzman%gaucho@RAND.ORG (Isaac) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: Joining Open Windows 2.0 and MIT X. Message-ID: <9008161814.AA19815@gaucho.rand.org> Date: 16 Aug 90 18:14:45 GMT References: Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background) Organization: The Internet Lines: 84 >bu.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ra!tzu!fwp1@bloom >-beacon.mit.edu (Frank Peters) writes: > >Here are some of the questions I have. Any and all suggestions would be >most gratefully accepted. Hiya. We've been running a mixed OpenWindows (1.0, 1.0.1, 2.0beta, 2.0) and X11R4 environment for quite some time. I've written some shell scripts and csh aliases to that are used here at RAND to deal with the mixed environment as well as provide a friendlier front end to xinit for people that have never used X before (we have a lot of SunView users that are just starting into X). You can anonymous ftp them from expo.lcs.mit.edu as contrib/sun-xaliases.shar.Z (they've been there since June, and I just updated it today). Here's how I deal with some of the problems you've mentioned: >1. Is it reasonable to copy (or link) the libraries in /usr/lib to the >lib directory in OPENWINHOME? Presumably the versions I have with >the latest MIT patches are newer and better than the ones that came >with OW 2.0. And presumably as new fixes come out of MIT they will >continue to improve. I've tried these links (in a personal copy of >OW 2.0 on my workstation) and this seems to work . In fact, it prevents >many of our existing X applications from complaining about library >versions (I can keep LD_LIBRARY_PATH defined without any conflicts). >Are there any hidden gotchas? You can link things in there if you like, it shouldn't be a problem. I set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to search the X11R4 lib directory first, then $OPENWINHOME/lib. The OW2 shared libX11 has a higher version number than the X11R4 version. To deal with that I just made a sym-link in the X11R4 lib directory: libX11.so.4.3 -> libX11.so.4.2, and that'll keep ld.so from complaining. I prefer that to trying to keep everything in one spot. The fewer sym-links I make, the better! :-) >2. Assuming that there is no desire to run sunview or news applications >would it be reasonable/better/faster to run the X server in /usr/bin/X11 >instead of xnews? I run the xnews server all the time. Give pageview, the NeWS PostScript previewer, a try sometime. They've done quite a nice job on it! Sometimes running SunView programs can be very useful. It's especially cool if you're debugging X applications with dbx or gdb and setting break points durring pointer grabs. You can start up a SunView cmdtool and run dbx in there. Since SunView app's are completely independant, the pointer grab won't effect the SunView window (whereas if you tried this in an xterm you would lock up the server and have to kill the process from another machine). I set up our scripts/aliases so people can run which ever they choose. On a Sun 3 with limited memory (< 8meg), you probably want to run the R4 server. On a SPARCstation, xnews and the R4 server run at about the same speed (if you have a GX, xnews is probably faster). >3. Are the libraries and such shipped with OW 2.0 identical to those which >will presumably reappear on expo? Assuming that I compile the expo >sources (without deleting my root directory :-) would it be reasonable >to replace the libraries in the Sun release with the newer (and better?) >ones? The XView source distribution presumably has some bug fixes that aren't in the OW2 binary distribution. You can replace the OW2 lib's with the ones you build from source if you like.... >4. Are there any other suggestions for improving the integration of MIT X >and OW 2.0? Fonts can be a hassle. If you've got Andrew or xtex installed you'll need to convert the Andrew and xtex fonts to xnews format. It would be nice if xnews could use .snf fonts. Converting the bdf fonts is pretty simple though. You run convertfont on the bdf files and then bldfamily on the directory that contains the output from convertfont. Then you use xset to add that stuff to your font path as you normally would. Check the man pages for details. Pick up sun-xaliases.shar.Z and check the README file for more MIT X and OW2 integration issues. :-) Ciao! -- * Isaac J. Salzman ---- * The RAND Corporation - Information Sciences Dept. /o o/ / * 1700 Main St., PO Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90406-2138 | v | | * AT&T : +1 213-393-0411 x6421 or x7923 (ISL lab) _| |_/ * Internet : salzman@rand.org / | | * UUCP : !uunet!rand.org!salzman | | |