Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!sdrc!evgabb
From: evgabb@sdrc.UUCP (Rob Gabbard)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Instant Ignition problems
Message-ID: <105@sdrc.UUCP>
Date: 10 Sep 90 12:51:53 GMT
References: <324@esl.ESL.COM>
Organization: SDRC, Cincinnati
Lines: 46

From article <324@esl.ESL.COM>, by jsd@esl.ESL.COM (Jeff Dalton):
> So in general, there is now way for XSession to run with the environment
> from a user (except thru the limited functionallity in .Xdefaults)?  And the

As you may have guessed from previous postings I have had several problems with
this. Another thing to watch out for when using the XSession.Env.... method is
that you cannot use environment variables IN environment variables. I do things
in my .profile like:

	if hp9000s300
	then
		CPUTYPE=motorola
	else
		CPUTYPE=precision
	fi
	export CPUTYPE

	PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:$HOME/local/bin/$CPUTYPE:
	export PATH

	This won't work since you have no way to set CPUTYPE via the .Xdefaults
method. It would work if Xsession would parse the .Xdefaults file in a manner
similar to xrdb by passing it through the C preprocessor first. Then the code
above would become:

	#ifdef hp9000s300
		XSession.CPUTYPE:	motorola
	#else
		XSession.CPUTYPE:	precision
	#endif

	XSession.HOME:			/u/joeuser
	XSession.PATH:			/bin:/usr/bin:$HOME/local/bin/$CPUTYPE:

Another workaround to these problems if you use the Korn or C shells is to place
some of the stuff you normally do in your .profile into your .cshrc or .kshrc
but this may cause a performance penalty when starting new shells or running
scripts (depending on what you do).

I hope HP has taken these problems into consideration for HP-VUE.

-- 

Rob Gabbard (uunet!sdrc!evgabb)  
Technical Development Engineer   
Structural Dynamics Research Corp