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From: guy@gorodish.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.emacs,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: [liberte@b.cs.uiuc.edu: Re:  -nw inconvenient for non X users]
Message-ID: <26854@sun.uucp>
Date: Sun, 30-Aug-87 04:50:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.26854
Posted: Sun Aug 30 04:50:37 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Aug-87 20:19:39 EDT
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Xref: utgpu comp.emacs:1621 comp.windows.x:916

> Emacs should cue on the TERM being xterm, rather than the DISPLAY
> variable being set.  If I'm really using xterm, then it's guaranteed
> that my TERM variable will be xterm, then check the DISPLAY variable
> for which display to use.

A couple of problems with this:

	1) Having TERM be "xterm" in a process does not in and of itself
	   indicate that it is possible for that process to use X!  Consider a
	   person logged in on an X server machine "a", with an "xterm" window
	   on that machine.  Say this person does an "rlogin" to machine "b",
	   and then subsequently does an "rlogin" to machine "c".  Assume that
	   machine "b" will NOT forward IP packets, so that there is a wall
	   between the network machines "a" and "b" are on, and the network
	   machines "b" and "c" are on, with only bridging services such as
	   mail, "rlogin", "telnet", "finger", etc.  between them.

	   "rlogin" will pass "xterm" over the wire as the terminal type, as it
	   should; however, programs on machine "c" will NOT be able to talk to
	   the X server on machine "a".

	   (Anybody care to guess what, on Saturday morning, I discovered
	   didn't work?  Grumble....)

	2) One could imagine a canned application, run e.g. from a menu,
	   that runs EMACS.  (In fact, this application could *be* EMACS.)
	   Such an application will not necessarily have TERM set to "xterm";
	   how then is EMACS to know that it should use X?
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com