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comp.windows.x Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) 2/7

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Archive-name: x-faq/part2
Last-modified: 1996/09/26

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Subject: 18)+ Can X11R6.1 be a freeware base? Will future X versions be free? Here is the text of a letter from rws@x.org (Bob Scheifler) to comp.windows.x on 8 July 1996: I suspect many of you have pretty much taken the X Consortium and the software it produces for granted for the past few years. Now that the X Consortium will be going away, a few people have asked whether X will continue to be available as free software in the future. The X Consortium has never been a freeware organization. We have long given our software away, but that has been a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Making our software freely available helped promote the commercial adoption of X by providing a level playing field, lowering the barrier to entry into the market, and promoting homogeneity and interoperability. Naturally, it also encouraged important R&D to take place within the academic and freeware communities, which was another way of promoting commercial adoption. What many of you probably don't know is that, had we not made the decision to wind down the X Consortium, we had been planning to institute a new software licensing plan starting with the upcoming Broadway release. Although the plan had been designed to have relatively little impact on non-commercial users (and indeed relatively little impact on X Consortium members), X would no longer have been free software in the usual sense of that term. If the XFree86/Linux/GNU/university/etc. communities want to continue to evolve X, then X11R6.1 is an excellent, and free, software base for you to make use of. Rights to that software can never be taken away from you. The Broadway release will, I hope, be an even better base, and one that will still be free. In a sense, once the X Consortium goes away, the freeware community may be in a better position to choose their own path, independent of what the UNIX platform vendors do. I won't give you any promises about the licensing terms of future releases of X from the Open Group. It remains to be seen whether future releases will add any substantial new technology, or just be maintenance releases. While the benefits of providing free software will not be ignored, the economics of X and indeed of the whole UNIX desktop have changed, and the Open Group will be working with the UNIX vendors and with us to formulate a business model which makes sense in that context. This will take some time, so don't expect quick answers. I'm sure some of you have questions about our ftp site, mailing lists, etc. Those issues too will be dealt with during the remainder of this year. Please be patient.
Subject: 19) TOPIC: USING X IN DAY-TO-DAY LIFE
Subject: 20) What are all these window managers? (Where can I get a "virtual" wm?) The window manager in X is just another client -- it is not part of the X window system, although it enjoys special privileges -- and so there is no single window manager; instead, there are many, which support different ways for the user to interact with windows and different styles of window layout, decoration, and keyboard and colormap focus. In approximate chronological order (generally, the more recent ones conformant more with the ICCCM and are the only ones being maintained): wm: this simple title-bar window manager was phased out in R2 or R3 uwm: the Universal Window Manager is still popular for its speed, although it is very outdated. Moved to contrib/ on the R4 tape. twm (old): Tom's Window Manager was among the first non-Consortium window managers and offered the user a great deal of customization options in a re-parenting window manager. awm: the Ardent Window Manager was for a while a hotbed for hackers and offered some features (dynamic menus) not found on more current window managers rtl: Siemen's window manager tiles windows so that they don't overlap and resizes the window with the focus to its preferred size. dxwm: Digital's dxwm is part of the DECwindows offering hpwm: HP's window manager offers a 3D look; it is a precursor of mwm mwm: the Motif window manager is part of the OSF/Motif toolkit tekwm: Tektronix's window manager offering olwm (Sun): olwm implements the OPEN LOOK GUI and some of the Style Guide functionality olwm (AT&T): ditto gwm: Bull's Generic Window Manager emulates others with a built-in Lisp interpreter. Version 1.8 is in koala.inria.fr:/pub/gwm/ and on ftp.x.org [7/95] m_swm: the Sigma window manager is on the R4 tape pswm: Sun's PostScript-based pswm is part of the OpenWindows release swm: Solbourne's swm is based on the OI toolkit and offers multiple GUI support and also a panning virtual window; configuration information comes from the resources file. Sources are on ftp.x.org in R5contrib/swm.tar.Z; they require OI binaries. twm (new): the new Tab Window Manager from the R4 tape is a reworked twm and is the basis for several derivatives, including the one on later X releases vtwm: vtwm offers some of the virtual-desktop features of swm, with a single-root window implementation. A new version, vtwm-5.3, is based on the R5 twm and is available from ftp.x.org. [1/94] tvtwm: Tom's Virtual Tab Window Manager is also based on the Tab Window Manager and provides a virtual desktop modeled on the virtual-root window of swm. It is available on ftp.x.org and mirroring archive servers. The current [3/95] version is available at ftp.x.org:/contrib/window_managers/tvtwm.pl11.tar.gz. olvwm: the vtwm-style virtual-desktop added to Sun's olwm. It is available on archive servers; version 4.1 [2/94] is on ftp.x.org. mvwm: the vtwm-style virtual-desktop added to OSF's mwm. A beta version is floating around (most recently from suresh@unipalm.co.uk) but requires a source license to OSF/Motif 1.1.3 [3/92]. NCDwm: the window manager local to NCD terminals offers an mwm look XDSwm: the window manager local to Visual Technology's terminals is simple but full-featured. ctwm: Claude Lecommandeur's (lecom@sic.epfl.ch) modification of the R5 twm offers 32 virtual screens in the fashion of HP vuewm and also offers the window overview used in vtwm and tvtwm. Version 3.3 [9/95] source is on ftp.x.org and possibly also sunsite.unc.edu. vuewm: HP's MWM-based window manager offers configurable workspaces. SAIC offers a version of this VUE environment. 4Dwm: SGI's enhanced MWM piewm: this version of tvtwm offers pie menus pmwm: IXI's Panorama version of MWM offers olvwm-like features. Info: +44 223 236 555, +1 408 427 7700; mmoore@x.co.uk or michaela@x.co.uk or laurie@ixi.com. fvwm: this virtual window manager has been rewritten from scratch and is very light on system resources (between half and two-thirds the memory usage of twm, on which it was based). fvwm offers most of the features others provide, plus additional features. Source is available from sunsite.unc.edu in /pub/Linux/X11/window-managers/; fvwm-1.24r-source.tar.z was current in 1/95; 2.1.0 is expected early 1996. Information: http://neutrino.nuc.berkeley.edu/neutronics/todd/fvwm.html and ftp://ftp.hpc.uh.edu/pub/fvwm/version-2/ . mwm 2.0: the 2.0 version of mwm includes support for multiple workspaces. 9wm, by David Hogan (dhog@cs.su.oz.au), is an X window manager which attempts to emulate the Plan 9 window manager 8-1/2 as far as possible within the constraints imposed by X. The latest version of 9wm is held at ftp://ftp.cs.su.oz.au/dhog/9wm . mwfm: MWFM is a Microsoft-Windows-Program-Manager-style applications manager. It offers Unix users the ability to work in a MS-Windows-like environment. Sources are at ftp.x.org:contrib/desktop_managers/mwfm1.0.tar.Z. Also of possible use is vr, by Richard Mauri (rmauri@netcom.com), on ftp.x.org and ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de (pub/comp/X11/contrib/clients/vr/vr-1.01.tar.Z); Vr is a workspace manager intended to be window-manager-independent.
Subject: 21) Why does my X session exit when I kill my window manager (sic)? It needn't. What is probably happening is that you are running your window manager as the last job in your .xsession or .xinitrc file; your X session runs only as long as the last job is running, and so killing your window manager is equivalent to logging out. Instead, run the window manager in the background, and as the last job instead invoke something safe like: exec xterm -name Login -rv -iconic or any special client of your devising which exits on some user action. Your X session will continue until you explicitly logout of this window, whether or not you kill or restart your window manager. Alternatively, there is a chance that you are using OpenLook, which by default kills all clients on logging out. Change your Exit menu choice from EXIT to WMEXIT to correct this behavior.
Subject: 22) Can I save the state of my X session, like toolplaces does? Although no known window manager directly supports such a feature (olvwm and swm may come close) -- which may be equivalent to writing out a .xinitrc or .xsession file naming the geometry and WM_COMMAND of each application -- there is a contributed application which does much of what you are looking for, although it is not as complete as the SunView program toolplaces. Look for the application "xplaces" on an archive-server near you. There are several versions of this program floating around; look for a recent vintage. [10/90] Some new pseudo session-managers such as HP's vuewm provide for the saving of sessions including information on the geometry of currently-running applications and the resource database. [Bjxrn Stabell (bjoerns@staff.cs.uit.no); 3/93.] In Release 6 a new session management protocol was defined, called XSMP (see doc/specs/SM), for telling applications when to save their internal state and for managing user dialog during the save. R6 contains a very simple session manager that exercises this protocol in the workInProgress directory; look for xsm. R6 also added a new shell widget class to Xt to make it easier to write applications that react to messages from a session manager. The window managers still have to do the work to save the window positions. [Dave Wiggins (dpw@x.org); 5/94.]
Subject: 23) How do I use another window manager with DEC's session manager? DEC's session manager will start dxwm up by default. To override this, add to your .Xdefaults file something like this line, naming the full pathname: sm.windowManagerName: /wherever/usr/bin/X11/your_favorite_wm
Subject: 24) How do I change the keyboard auto-repeat rate? You can turn auto-repeat on or off by using "xset r on|off". The base X11 protocol, doesn't provide for varying the auto-repeat rate, which is a capability not supported by all systems. Some pre-R6 servers may provide command-line flags to set the rate at start-up time. If you have control over server start-up (see the man pages for xinit and xdm), you can invoke the server with the chosen settings; for example, you can start the R5 Xsun sample server with the options "-ar1 350 -ar2 30" to reduce the sensitivity of the keyboard. The R6 X Keyboard Extension provides a vendor-independent way to control repeat delay and rate.
Subject: 25) How do I remap the keys on my keyboard to produce a string? There is no method of arranging for a particular string to be produced when you press a particular key. The xmodmap client, which is useful for moving your CTRL and ESC keys to useful places, just rearranges keys and does not do "macro expansion." Some (few) clients, including xterm and several X-based editors, accept a translation resource such as: xterm*VT100.Translations: #override \ <Key>F1: string("setenv DISPLAY unix:0") which permits the shorthand F1 to be pressed to reset the display locally within an xterm; it takes effect for new xterm clients. To include control characters in the string, use \nnn, where nnn is the octal encoding of the control character you want to include. Window managers, which could provide this facility, do not yet; nor has a special "remapper" client been made available.
Subject: 26) How do I make a screendump or print my application (including menus)? The xwd client in the X11 distributions can be used to select a window or the background. It produces an XWD-format file of the image of that window. The file can be post-processed into something useful or printed with the xpr client and your local printing mechanism. To print a screendump including a menu or other object which has grabbed the pointer, you can use this command: csh% sleep 10; xwd -root > output.xwd & and then spend 10 seconds or so setting up your screen; the entire current display will be saved into the file output.xwd. Note that xwd also has an undocumented (before R5) -id flag for specifying the window id on the command-line. [There are also unofficial patches on ftp.x.org to xwd for specifying the delay and the portion of the screen to capture.] Note that xwd makes the assumption that it can make a single XGetImage call and then decode the returned pixels via the associated colormap; the pixels returned are undefined if the area you've selected includes multiple windows with varying visuals, colormaps, or double-buffer states. Two publicly-available programs which allow interactive definition of arbitrary portions of the display and built-in delays are xsnap and xgrabsc. xgrabsc is a free screendump program that provides multiple selection styles and several output formats. Selection styles include xwd-style point and click, dragging a rectangle over an arbitrary portion of the screen, timed snapshots for menu capturing, and keyboard-based selection. Output formats are xwd, XPM (v1 and 2), bitmap, puzzle, and monochrome, greyscale, and color PostScript. PostScript output can be in ready-to-print true-scale form or encapsulated for inclusion in Frame, xfig, and other programs that accept EPS graphics. There are several versions of xgrabsc; version 2.3, available on ftp.x.org [9/93] is the most recent. xgrab, part of the package, is an interactive front-end to xgrabsc. xwpick (formerly xpick) (by Evgeni Chernyaev (chernaev@mx.ihep.su)) is available on ftp.x.org as xwpick-2.20.tar.Z; it creates Level 2 color PostScript dumps of X screens and can generate GIF, PICT, and other formats. PostScript output is very small. xwpick runs under VMS and Unix systems. xsnap includes some asnap features and supersedes it; it also renders XPM output [version unknown]. It is available on ftp.x.org or avahi.inria.fr; see xsnap-pl2.tar.Z. A screen-dump and merge/edit program combining features of xwd and xpr is available from vernam.cs.uwm.edu as xdump1.0.tar.Z. Information: soft-eng@cs.uwm.edu. xprint, by Alberto Accomazzi (alberto@cfa.harvard.edu) is available from cfa0.harvard.edu (128.103.40.1) as /pub/wipl/xprint.export-2.1.tar.Z. The package allows users to create encapsulated color PostScript files which will print on any PostScript Level-1 compliant printer (black and white or color). To post-process the xwd output of some of these tools, you can use xpr, which is part of the X11 distribution (moved to contrib in R6). Also on several archives are xwd2ps and "import" (formerly XtoPS), which produce Encapsulated PostScript with trimmings suitable for use in presentations (see ftp.x.org:R5contrib/xwd2ps.tar.Z and contrib/applications/ImageMagick/ImageMagick3.7.tar.Z). Also useful is the PBMPLUS/Netpbm package on many archive servers; and the Xim package contains Level 2 color PostScript output. The xv program can grab a portion of the X display, manipulate it, and save it in one of the available formats. ImageMagick has similar capabilities. Also: HP's capture tool (provided with MPower and SharedPrint) corrects some of the problems xwd has with XGetImage. Bristol Technology (info@bristol.com, 203-438-6969) offers Xprinter, an Xlib API for PostScript and PCL printers; a demo is in ftp.bristol.com:/pub/Demos/DE. ColorSoft 9619-459-8500) offers OPENprint; the package includes a screen-capture facility, image-processing, and support for PostScript and non-PostScript printers. Some vendors' implementations of X (e.g. DECWindows and OpenWindows) include session managers or other desktop programs which include "print portion of screen" or "take a snapshot" options. Some platforms also have tools which can be used to grab the frame-buffer directly; the Sun systems, for example, have a 'screendump' program which produces a Sun raster file. Some X terminals have local screen-dump utilities to write PostScript to a local serial printer. Some vendors' implementations of lpr (e.g. Sony) include direct support for printing xwd files, but you'll typically need some other package to massage the output into a useful format which you can get to the printer.
Subject: 27) How do I make a color PostScript screendump of the X display? If you need color PostScript in particular, you can - grab the screen-image using a program which can produce color PostScript, such as xgrabsc, xprint, xwpick, and xv - grab the screen-image using xwd and post-process xwd into color PS. You can do this using xwd2ps or the "import" (formerly XtoPS) program from the ImageMagick distribution. The PBMPLUS/Netpbm package is also good for this, as is the Xim package. Also: Another alternative is to use the Xprinter product from Bristol Technology, Inc. which provides PostScript output using the Xlib API. Send email to info@bristol.com for details.
Subject: 28) How do I make a screendump without having an X display? Some applications need to be able to make a screendump at a point at which they don't have access to an X display or can't rely on one or can't rely on an unsupervised screendump operating correctly. An option for all these cases is to use the xvfb X Virtual Frame Buffer in X11R6. The X Virtual Frame Buffer Server uses memory allocated in the process heap or even mmapped to a file as its frame buffer.
Subject: 29) How do I make a screendump including the X cursor? This can't be done unless the X server has been extended. Consider instead a system-dependent mechanism for, e.g., capturing the frame-buffer.
Subject: 30)! How do I convert or view Mac/TIFF/GIF/Sun/PICT/img/FAX images in X? The likeliest program is an incarnation of Jef Poskanzer's useful++ Portable Bitmap Toolkit, which includes a number of programs for converting among various image formats. It includes support for many types of bitmaps, gray-scale images, and full-color images. PBMPLUS has been updated recently; the most recent version [12/91] is on ftp.x.org in R5contrib/pbmplus10dec91.tar.Z. Netpbm is based on the PBMPLUS 10dec91 release, with many additions and improvements. It is intended to be portable to many platforms while allowing for conversion of images between a variety of formats. The latest sources are on several sites, including ftp.x.org:/contrib/utilities/netpbm-1mar1994.tar.gz, wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) and peipa.essex.ac.uk (155.245.115.161). Contact oliver@fysik4.kth.se to be added to the netpbm mailing list. xpdf, a Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer for X, is at (source and binaries, especially Linux binaries): http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/usr/dn0o/xpdf/xpdf.html ftp://ftp.andrew.cmu.edu/pub/xpdf/ ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/xapps/graphics/viewers/ . Version 0.4 became available 4/96. Certain pixmap editors (e.g. xpaint) can read in a variety of formats and write out in different formats. Another tool is San Diego Supercomputing Center's IMtools ('imconv' in particular), which packages the functionality of PBM into a single binary. It's available anonymous ftp from sdsc.edu (132.249.20.22). Useful for viewing and converting some image-formats is Jim Frost's xloadimage; the most recent [11/93] is on ftp.x.org in R5contrib/xloadimage.4.1.tar.Z. Graeme Gill's updates to an earlier version of xloadimage are also on ftp.x.org; see xli.README and xli.tar.Z.uu; version 1.15 was released 7/93. xv (X Image Viewer), written by John Bradley (xv@devo.dccs.upenn.edu for XV questions), can read and display pictures in Sun Raster, PGM, PBM, PPM, X11 bitmap, TIFF, GIF and JPEG. It can manipulate on the images: adjust, color, intensity, contrast, aspect ratio, crop). It can save images in all of the aforementioned formats plus PostScript. It can grab a portion of the X display, manipulate on it, and save it in one of the available formats. The program was updated 5/92; see the file R5contrib/xv-2.21.tar.Z on ftp.x.org. Version 3.10a [3/95] is distributed as shareware. New versions are on ftp.cis.upenn.edu in pub/xv. The latest revision of XAnim is 2.70.3 and can handle a wide range of audio and video formats, including Quicktime, AVI, FLI, IFF, GIF, MJPG. XAnim's available from the XAnim Home Page at http://www.portal.com/~podlipec/home.html or via ftp://ftp.portal.com/pub/podlipec [3/96]. xa, an xview-based X11 animation tool by Derek Richardson (derek@phaeton.ucsc.edu), is available at ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/applications/xa-1.2beta/ [5/96]. The Fuzzy Pixmap Manipulation, by Michael Mauldin (mlm@nl.cs.cmu.edu). Conversion and manipulation package, similar to PBMPLUS. Version 1.0 available via FTP as ftp://nl.cs.cmu.edu/usr/mlm/ftp/, uunet.uu.net:pub/fbm.tar.Z, and ucsd.edu:graphics/fbm.tar.Z. The Img Software Set, by Paul Raveling <raveling@venera.isi.edu>, reads and writes its own image format, displays on an X11 screen, and does some image manipulations. Version 1.3 is available via FTP on ftp.x.org as R5contrib/img_1.3.tar.Z, along with large collection of color images. The Utah RLE Toolkit is a conversion and manipulation package similar to PBMPLUS. Available via FTP as cs.utah.edu:pub/urt-*, weedeater.math.yale.edu:pub/urt-*, and freebie.engin.umich.edu:pub/urt-*. Xim, The X Image Manipulator, by Philip Thompson, does essential interactive displaying, editing, filtering, and converting of images. There is a version in the X11R4 contrib area; but a more recent version (using R4 and Motif 1.1) is available from gis.mit.edu (18.80.1.118). Xim reads/writes gif, xwd, xbm, tiff, rle, xim, (writes level 2 eps) and other formats and also has a library and command-line utilities for building your own applications. ImageMagick by cristy@dupont.com is an X11 package for display and interactive manipulation of images. Includes tools for image conversion, annotation, compositing, animation, and creating montages. ImageMagick can read and write many of the more popular image formats (JPEG, TIFF, PNM, PostScript, ...). Available via FTP from ftp.x.org as contrib/applications/ImageMagick/ImageMagick3.7.tar.Z. [12/95] See also http://www.wizards.dupont.com/cristy/ImageMagick.htmlZ . GIMP is a General Image Manipulation Program. It is available at http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~gimp or via email to gimp@soda.csua.berkeley.edu. It is currently [12/95] in beta. xtiff is a tool for viewing a TIFF file in an X window. It was written to handle as many different kinds of TIFF files as possible while remaining simple, portable and efficient. xtiff illustrates some common problems with building pixmaps and using different visual classes. It is distributed as part of Sam Leffler's libtiff package and it is also available on ftp.x.org and comp.sources.x. [dbs@decwrl.dec.com,10/90] xtiff 2.0 was announced in 4/91; it includes Xlib and Xt versions. gpv is an image viewer with processing capabilities. It uses Pacco to get all the image processing support and it is coded entirely in TCL. Gpv can be fetched at ftp://iride.unipv.it/pub/Pacco/gpv-0.1.tar.gz . The latest release of Pacco is at ftp://iride.unipv.it/pub/Pacco/pacco-0.9a7.tar.gz . [8/96] A version of Lee Iverson's (leei@McRCIM.McGill.EDU) image-viewing tool is available as R5contrib/vimage-0.9.3.tar.Z on ftp.x.org. The package also includes an ImageViewPort widget and a FileDialog widget. [12/91;5/92] The Andrew User Interface System (version 5.2 and later) provides an image inset which can view many image formats. Like all Andrew insets, an image can be incorporated in a a document or sent in email via the MIME standard. The following formats can be read: Sunraster, GIF, Xbitmap, TIFF, Xpixmap, JPEG, PBM, XWD. The LUG (Libreria de Utilidades Graficas) is a library of subroutines offering several routines for the manipulation of images in several different formats. The distribution includes viewers for several different platforms. The distribution is on telva.ccu.uniovi.es (156.35.31.31): /uniovi/mathdept/src/liblug-1.0.1.tar.gz. The X Image Extension (XIE), an X Consortium standard in R6, provides facilities for transmitting displaying fax (G3, G4), TIFF, and JPEG images. [some material from Larry Carroll (larryc@poe.jpl.nasa.gov), 5/91] A distributed real-time MPEG video and audio player is available from ftp.cse.ogi.edu (129.29.20.2) in /pub/dsrg/Player/ (http://cse.ogi.edu/DISC/projects/synthetix/Player/ ) [5/95].
Subject: 31) Where can I get an X-based 3-D object viewer? xmgf by Paul Hoad (P.Hoad@ee.surrey.ac.uk) is an interactive tool for viewing 2D and 3D objects typically in gf/OFF/NFF/IGRIP/MINICAD/SLA/DXF format Sources are on ftp.x.org. Version 1.9.1 became available 12/93. x3d is a V.Fast 3D Object viewer for X it needs no special hardware or or widget libraries other that X and is optimized for speed. XGobi can be used to to view such data. VOGLE can be used to to view such data. An interactive 3D viewer based on the X Window System is "Geomview"; information is available at http://www.geom.umn.edu/software/geomview/docs/gvpeek.html . xdim 2.6 is available [1/96] from ftp://ftp.uni-stuttgart.de//pub/unix/X11/graphics/xdim/xdim2_6.tar.gz . XDim combines features from data processing (p.ex. import from table calc. programs) and image processing (p.ex. import GIF's and JPEG's) with an interactive 3D Viewer and Motif user interface. Grapher-3D generates surfaces of two variable functions allowing users to view these surfaces from any three dimensional position. Dynamic axis rotation and domain shifting help better illustrate the nature of a function. Sources are on ftp.x.org in contrib/graphics/Grapher-3D/, including source grapher-3d-1.2.tar.gz and some binary sets. [3/96] Also of use: Hv (for Hot Views) is a library that greatly simplifies the development of applications with a sophisticated graphical user interface. It is layered on top of X, Xt (R4 or later), and OSF Motif (version 1.1 or later); however, the developer is completely insulated from those libraries. Information: heddle@cebaf.gov. Sources are on ftp://ftp.cebaf.gov/pub/heddle/Hv/ .
Subject: 32) How can I change the titlebar of my terminal window? The solution involves sending an escape sequence to xterm which will cause it to update the property which the window manager relies upon for the string which appears in the window titlebar. A solution is as easy as typing this in an xterm running a shell: echo "ESC]2;TEXT^G" where ESC is the escape key, TEXT is the string you wish to have displayed, and ^G is a Control-G (the BEL character). Note that the semi-colon is demanded by more recent versions of xterm. (Some shells and editors need an escape character, typically ^V, before accepting control characters literally.) Here is a more complicated csh alias which changes the titlebar to the current working directory when you change directories: alias newcd 'cd \!*; echo -n ESC]2\;$cwd^G' (for other shells e.g. ksh you will need to write a function for cd to print this value). The digit '2' in these strings indicates to xterm that it should change only the title of the window; to change both the title and the name used in the icon, use the digit '0' instead, and use '1' to change only the icon name. Note: another way to do this, which prevents an incorrect display of the local directory if a modified `cd` is used in a subshell, is to wrap the escape sequences into the PS1 prompt itself. If you are using DECterm, the sequence for window titles is "ESC]21;TEXTESC\"; for icons, the sequence is "ESC]2L;TEXTESC\". For an HPterm, you need "ESC&f0k<length>DTEXT". Here <length> is the number of characters in TEXT, as a decimal number in ASCII. To change the icon name, use "ESC&f-1k<length>DTEXT". [thanks to Karsten Spang (krs@kampsax.dk); 12/94]
Subject: 33) Where can I find the xterm control sequences? The best source of such information is in your R5/R6 sources in the file ctlseqs.ms (R6: xc/doc/specs/xterm/ctlseqs.ms); a PostScript version is in your R5 sources in mit/hardcopy/clients/ctlseqs.PS.Z and your R6 sources in xc/doc/hardcopy/xterm/ctlseqs.PS.Z. Both editions of O'Reilly's Volume 3, the X User's Guide, include an R5 version of the control sequences. Other good sources of information include the R4 version of that document and also the file in the R4 sources called mit/clients/xterm/ctlseq2.txt, a compilation put together by Skip Montanaro (GE CR&D) listing the VT100 sequences. It dates from R3 but is fairly accurate. A hardcopy version was published in the December 1989 XNextEvent (the XUG newsletter). In a pinch, a VT100 manual will do. [last updated 10/91]
Subject: 34) How can I use characters above ASCII 127 in xterm ? In order to use special characters such as the o-umlaut, you need to "stty pass8" (you may need "stty -parenb -istrip cs8" on strictly-POSIX systems) but also to use a charcell ISO8859 font, such as XTerm*font: -*-*-medium-r-normal-*-*-130-*-*-c-*-iso8859-1 XTerm*boldfont: -*-*-bold-r-normal-*-*-130-*-*-c-*-iso8859-1 [The family is intentionally unspecified in this example.] In addition, you may want to set this in your shell: setenv LC_CTYPE iso_8859_1 For a given character above 127, you can determine the key to use with the Alt modifier by finding the equivalent character below 127 (try using `man ascii`). For example, o-umlaut (v) is Alt-v and the section character (') is Alt-'. [thanks to Greg Holmberg (greg%thirdi@uunet.uu.net) and Stephen Gildea (gildea@x.org); 6/92]
Subject: 35) Why are my xterm menus so small (sic) ? You are probably setting the geometry small accidentally. If you give a resource specification like this: xterm*geometry: 80x24 then you are asking for all widgets under xterm to have their geometry set to 80x24. For the main window, this is OK, as it uses characters for its size. But its popup menus don't; they are in pixels and show up small. To set only the terminal widget to have the specified geometry, name it explicitly: xterm*VT100.geometry: 80x24
Subject: 36)! How can I control the mouse with the keyboard? If you have the X Keyboard (XKB) Extension, you can enable mouse keys, which makes it possible to generate mouse motion and button events using the keyboard. Events generated by MouseKeys are completely transparent -- they will work with any application that connects to a server that has the X Keyboard Extension, regardless of whether the application itself uses XKB. XKB is enabled by default in X11R6.1. First, set up the Num Lock key so that Shift+Num_Lock toggles mouse keys: xmodmap -e "keysym Num_lock = Num_Lock Pointer_EnableKeys" (XFree86 3.1.2E is based on R6.1 and has the X Keyboard Extension; it also has a binding to Pointer_EnableKeys in its default keymap. You use Alt+Shift+Num_Lock to toggle MouseKeys on and off. If you are using an earlier release of X or XFree86, you won't have XKB and the instructions will not work. See http://www.XFree86.org/FAQ for more information.) You might also have to turn off server num lock for this to work. Now press "Shift+Num_Lock" to enable MouseKeys. When MouseKeys are on: o) The keypad arrow keys move the pointer o) The keypad '5' key behaves like the 'default' pointer button o) The keypad '0' key locks the default pointer button (for easy dragging) o) The keypad '.' key unlock the default pointer button (to release a drag) o) The keypad '+' key double-clicks the default pointer button. o) The keypad '/' key sets the 'default' button to Button1 o) The keypad '*' key sets the default button to Button2 o) The keypad '-' key sets the default button to Button3 This is the default configuration, but the mechanism allows for nearly infinite configurability. [thanks to Erik Fortune (erik@westworld.engr.sgi.com), 6/96]
Subject: 37) How can I print the current X selection? You could paste it into an xterm after executing the lpr command. However, a program by Richard Hesketh (rlh2@ukc.ac.uk) specifically for manipulating the selection will help; e.g. % xselection PRIMARY | lpr finds the primary selection and prints it. This command can be placed in a window-manager menu or in shell-scripts. xselection also permits the setting of the selection and other properties. A version is on ftp.x.org. Also available is ria.ccs.uwo.ca:pub/xget_selection.tar.Z, which can be adapted to do this.
Subject: 38) Where are the resources loaded from? The resources of a widget are filled in from the following places (from highest priority to lowest priority): 1. Args passed at creation time. 2. Command line arguments. 3. User's per host defaults file 4. User's defaults file. 5. User's per application default file. 6. System wide per application default file. Note that 2-6 are read only once on application startup. The result of steps 3-6 is a single resource database used for further queries. Please see the comp.windows.x.intrinsics FAQ, from which this information is abstracted, for a full explanation of how to specify the location of files; see also a good book on Xt, such as ORA's Volume 4, the Asente/Swick book, or the Xt documentation, for more information.
Subject: 39) How does Xt use environment variables in loading resources? You can use several environment variables to control how resources are loaded for your Xt-based programs -- XFILESEARCHPATH, XUSERFILESEARCHPATH, and XAPPLRESDIR. These environment variables control where Xt looks for application-defaults files as an application is initializing. Xt loads at most one app-defaults file from the path defined in XFILESEARCHPATH and another from the path defined in XUSERFILESEARCHPATH. XAPPLRESDIR existed in R3 and before. As of R4, the Xt developers added the more sophisticated *SEARCHPATH mechanism, but left XAPPLRESDIR in place to avoid breaking existing software. Set XFILESEARCHPATH if software is installed on your system in such a way that app-defaults files appear in several different directory hierarchies. Suppose, for example, that you are running Sun's Open Windows, and you also have some R4 X applications installed in /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults. You could set a value like this for XFILESEARCHPATH, and it would cause Xt to look up app-defaults files in both /usr/lib/X11 and /usr/openwin/lib (or wherever your OPENWINHOME is located): setenv XFILESEARCHPATH /usr/lib/X11/%T/%N:$OPENWINHOME/lib/%T/%N The value of this environment variable is a colon-separated list of pathnames. The pathnames contain replacement characters as follows (see XtResolvePathname()): %N The value of the filename parameter, or the application's class name. %T The value of the file "type". In this case, the literal string "app-defaults" %C customization resource (R5/R6 only) %D site default value for XFILESEARCHPATH (R6 only) %S Suffix. None for app-defaults. %L Language, locale, and codeset (e.g. "ja_JP.EUC") %l Language part of %L (e.g. "ja") %t The territory part of the display's language string %c The codeset part of the display's language string Let's take apart the example. Suppose the application's class name is "Myterm". Also, suppose Open Windows is installed in /usr/openwin. (Notice the example omits locale-specific lookup.) /usr/lib/X11/%T/%N means /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Myterm $OPENWINHOME/lib/%T/%N means /usr/openwin/lib/app-defaults/Myterm As the application initializes, Xt tries to open both of the above app-defaults files, in the order shown. As soon as it finds one, it reads it and uses it, and stops looking for others. The effect of this path is to search first in /usr/lib/X11, then in /usr/openwin. Let's consider another example. This time, let's set XUSERFILESEARCHPATH so it looks for the file Myterm.ad in the current working directory, then for Myterm in the directory ~/app-defaults. setenv XUSERFILESEARCHPATH ./%N.ad:$HOME/app-defaults/%N The first path in the list expands to ./Myterm.ad. The second expands to $HOME/app-defaults/Myterm. This is a convenient setting for debugging because it follows the Imake convention of naming the app-defaults file Myterm.ad in the application's source directory, so you can run the application from the directory in which you are working and still have the resources loaded properly. NOTE: when looking for app-default files with XUSERFILESEARCHPATH, for some bizarre reason, neither the type nor file suffix is defined so %T and %S are useless. With R5 and R6, there's another twist. You may specify a customization resource value. For example, you might run the "myterm" application like this: myterm -xrm "*customization: -color" If one of your pathname specifications had the value "/usr/lib/X11/%T/%N%C" then the expanded pathname would be "/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Myterm-color" because the %C substitution character takes on the value of the customization resource. The default XFILESEARCHPATH, compiled into Xt, is: /usr/lib/X11/%L/%T/%N%C:\ (R5) /usr/lib/X11/%l/%T/%N%C:\ (R5) /usr/lib/X11/%T/%N%C:\ (R5) /usr/lib/X11/%L/%T/%N:\ /usr/lib/X11/%l/%T/%N:\ /usr/lib/X11/%T/%N (Note: some sites replace /usr/lib/X11 with a ProjectRoot in this batch of default settings.) The default XUSERFILESEARCHPATH, also compiled into Xt, is <root>/%L/%N%C:\ (R5) <root>/%l/%N%C:\ (R5) <root>/%N%C:\ (R5) <root>/%L/%N:\ <root>/%l/%N:\ <root>/%N: <root> is either the value of XAPPLRESDIR or the user's home directory if XAPPLRESDIR is not set. If you set XUSERFILESEARCHPATH to some value other than the default, Xt ignores XAPPLRESDIR altogether. Notice that the quick and dirty way of making your application find your app-defaults file in your current working directory is to set XAPPLRESDIR to ".", a single dot. In R3, all this machinery worked differently; for R3 compatibilty, many people set their XAPPLRESDIR value to "./", a dot followed by a slash. [Thanks to Oliver Jones (oj@world.std.com); 2/93.]
Subject: 40) How to I have xdm put a picture behind the log-in window? R5/R6 users can specify the "setup" script that xdm runs by changing the entry in the xdm-config file (usually in /usr/lib/X11/xdm) to name a different script; the sample script distributed with the X distribution simply runs xconsole. See the SETUP PROGRAM section of the xdm man page in R6 for precise details. Pre-R5 versions of the xdm client could be spoofed by in changing xdm's xrdb resource in the xdm-config file to run a program to change the background before loading the resources; for example, your /usr/lib/X11/xdm/xdm-config file may add the line DisplayManager.0.authorize: false to permit unrestricted access to the display before log-in (beware!) and also DisplayManager*xrdb: /usr/lib/X11/xdm/new.xrdb where that file does something (for all connections) along the lines of: #!/bin/sh #comes in with arguments: -display :0 -load /usr/lib/X11/xdm/Xresources /usr/bin/X11/xsetroot -display $2 -bitmap /usr/lib/X11/xdm/new.bitmap /usr/bin/X11/xrdb $* Substitute xloadimage or xv for xsetroot, to taste. Note that this is a general hack that can be used to invoke a console window or any other client. [Thanks to Jay Bourland (jayb@cauchy.stanford.edu), 9/91]
Subject: 41) Why isn't my PATH set when xdm runs my .xsession file? When xdm runs your .xsession it doesn't source your .cshrc or .login files. You can set the path explicitly as you normally could for any SH script; or you can place all environment-setting statements in a separate file and source it from both the .xsession file and your shell configuration file; or, if you set your PATH in your .cshrc file, the normal place, you can make your .xsession have PATH set simply by making it a csh script, i.e. by starting your .xsession file off with "#!/bin/csh". If this doesn't work, also try starting off with: #!/bin/sh # Reset path: PATH=`csh -c 'echo $PATH'` ; export PATH
Subject: 42) How do I keep my $DISPLAY when I rlogin to another machine? There are several ways to avoid having to do a "setenv DISPLAY ..." whenever you log in to another networked UNIX machine running X. A trivial solution, if your account is cross-mounted on both machines, is to have your .xsession write your DISPLAY variable to a file, and then in your login dot-files to check for the existence of that that file and use its contents as your DISPLAY. [Thanks to joachim.fricker@zh014.ubs.ubs.ch.] One solution is to use the clients/xrsh on the R5 and R6 contrib tapes. It includes xrsh, a script to start an X application on remote machine, and xrlogin, a script to start a local xterm running rlogin to a remote machine. A more recent version is on export in contrib/utilities/xrsh-5.8.shar.gz [21/94]. One solution is to use the xrlogin program from der Mouse (mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu). You can ftp caveat-emptor versions from ftp.cim.mcgill.ca (132.206.4.7) in pub/people/mouse/X/xrlogin/. The program packages up $TERM and $DISPLAY into a single string, which is stuffed into $TERM. rlogin then propagates $TERM normally; your .cshrc on the remote machine should contain eval `xrlogind` where xrlogind is a program that checks $TERM and if it is of the special format it recognizes, unpacks it and spits out setenv and unsetenv commands to recreate the environment variables. [11/90] In addition, if all you need to do is start a remote X process on another host, and you find rsh <HOST> -n /usr/bin/X11/xterm -display $DISPLAY too simple (DISPLAY must have your real hostname), then this version of xrsh can be used to start up remote X processes. The equivalent usage would be xrsh <HOST> xterm #! /bin/sh # start an X11 process on another host # Date: 8 Dec 88 06:29:34 GMT # From: Chris Torek <chris@mimsy.umd.edu> # rsh $host -n "setenv DISPLAY $DISPLAY; exec $@ </dev/null >&/dev/null" # # An improved version: # rXcmd (suggested by John Robinson, jr@bbn.com) # (generalized for sh,ksh by Keith Boyer, keith@cis.ohio-state.edu) # # but they put the rcmd in ()'s which left zombies again. This # script combines the best of both. case $# in [01]) echo "Usage: $0 host x-cmd [args...]";; *) case $SHELL in *csh*) host="$1"; shift xhost "$host" > /dev/null rsh "$host" -n \ "setenv TERM xterm; setenv DISPLAY `hostname`:0; \ exec $* </dev/null >& /dev/null" & ;; *sh) host="$1"; shift xhost "$host" > /dev/null rsh "$host" -n \ "TERM=xterm export TERM; \ DISPLAY=`hostname`:0 export DISPLAY; \ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/X11/lib export LD_LIBRARY_PATH; \ PATH=\$PATH:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/local/bin; \ export PATH; \ exec $* < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1" & ;; esac ;; esac You may also want to look at programs/rstart in the R6 distribution; this remote execution protocol is intended to work in concert with session managers.
Subject: 43) How can I design my own font? One way is to use the "bitmap" client or some other bitmap-editor (e.g. Sun's icon-editor tool, post-processed with pbmplus) to design the individual characters and then to do some large amount of post-processing to concatenate them into the BDF format. See Ollie Jones's article in the November 91 X Journal for more information. The R3 contrib/ area (in fonts/utils/ and in clients/xtroff) contained a number of useful utilities, including some to convert between BDF font format and a simple character format which can be edited with any text editor. An easier way is to use the "xfed" client to modify an existing font; a version is on the R4 or R5 X11R5 contrib tape in contrib/clients/xfed. Xfed was last seen on ftp.Informatik.Uni-Dortmund.DE [129.217.64.63], possibly as file /pub/windows/X/Diverse-X11-Sourcen/xfed.tar.Z. It can produce BDF-format fonts which can be compiled for a variety of X servers. IBM machines appear to have a utility "fontutil". The xfedor client from Group Bull permits creation of bitmaps, cursors, XPM1 pixmaps, and fonts. Binaries for common machines are on avahi.inria.fr in /pub; in addition, the sources (an old Xlib implementation) have been placed [5/91] in ftp://ftp.x.org/R5contrib/. If you are a MetaFont user you can use "mftobdf" from the SeeTeX distribution to convert PK, GF, and PXL fonts to BDF format; the distribution is on ftp.cs.colorado.edu and on ftp.x.org. The GNU package fontutils-0.4.tar.Z on prep.ai.mit.edu includes xbfe, a font editor, and a number of utilities for massaging font formats. The O'Reilly X Resource issue #2 contains an article on using these tools to modify a font. Fonts can be resized with Hiroto Kagotani's bdfresize; a new version is in ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp:/X11/contrib. bdffont in the Andrew User Interface System (versions 5.2.2 and higher) lets you create a font or edit an existing one.
Subject: 44) Why does adding a font to the server not work (sic)? After you have built the font using your system's font-compiler, installed it in some directory, and run `mkfontdir` or your system's equivalent (e.g. bldfamily for OpenWindows) in that directory, be sure to use `xset +fp $dir` to add that full path-name to the server's font-path, *or* if the directory is already in the path, use `xset fp rehash` so that the new fonts in that directory are actually found; it is this last step that you're probably leaving out. (You can also use `xset q` to make sure that that directory is in the path.) Sometimes your "xset +fp $dir" command fails with a BadValue error: X Error of failed request:BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation) Major opcode of failed request: 51 (X_SetFontPath) This means the X server cannot find or read your font directory, or that your directory does not look like a font directory to the server. (The mention of an "integer parameter" in the message is spurious.) -- Is the font directory you're specifying readable from the SERVER's file system? Remember, it's the server, not the client, which interprets your font directory. Trouble in this area is especially likely when you issue an xset command with shell metacharacters in it (e.g. "xset +fp ~/myfonts") and the server is an X terminal or managed by xdm. -- Is the directory really a font directory? If you're running the sample X server (or most varieties of vendor servers) look in the directory for the file "fonts.dir". If you can't find that file, run mkfontdir(1). (If you're running OpenWindows, look for the file "Families.list". If you can't find it, run bldfamily(1).) -- If you're in a site where some people run X11Rn servers and others run a proprietary server with nonstandard font formats (OpenWindows, for example), make sure the font directory is right for the server you're using. Hint: if the directory contains .pcf and/or .snf files, it won't work for Open Windows. If the directory contains .ff and/or .fb files, it won't work for X11Rn. [thanks to der Mouse (mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu) and to Oliver Jones (oj@pictel.com); 7/92 ] Note: some systems (e.g. X11R4 on AIX) need a trailing '/' in the directory name.
Subject: 45) How do I convert a ".snf" font back to ".bdf" font? A tool called "snftobdf 1.6" can do this; it is available as: ftp.x.org:R5contrib/snftobdf-1.6.tar.Z crl.nmsu.edu:pub/misc/snftobdf-1.6.tar.Z
Subject: 46) What is a general method of getting a font in usable format? der Mouse's getbdf is one solution; it connects to a server and produces a BDF file for any font the server is willing to let it. It can be used as an anything-to-BDF converter, but requires access to a server that can understand the font file, thus is both more and less powerful than other tools such as snftobdf. getbdf is on 132.206.78.1 in X/getbdf.c or available via mail from mouse@larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU. [5/91] In addition, the R5/R6 program "fstobdf" can produce bdf for any font that the R5 server has access to.
Subject: 47) How do I use DECwindows fonts on my non-DECwindows server? The DECwindows fonts typically don't exist on a non-DEC installation, but rewrite rules can be used to alias fonts used by DECwindows applications to standard X fonts of similar characteristics and size. Pick up the file R5contrib/DECwindows_on_X11R4_font.aliases from ftp.x.org; this file is for a sample R4 server. It can also serve as a starting point for creating a similar aliases file for the Open Windows server or other servers which do not use the X Consortium's font scheme. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- David B. Lewis faq%craft@uunet.uu.net "Just the FAQs, ma'am." -- Joe Friday

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