Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

I had just written a long reply to this, after testing out Xvesa with the 
new .xinitrc, and some combination of Xvesa, 80x30, possibly mda, possibly 
kermit and telnet, eliminated all keyboard access to the vga terminal I 
was typing on.  My reply does not seem to have been saved.

I don't recommend mixing Xvesa and vga=ask (different numbers of columns 
and/or rows in CLI).  Someties I lose the mda cursor. For a while the 
cursor would go off the bottom of the page when I arrowed down but the 
next page did not come up on the screen.  Then the cursor disappeared 
entirely.  Usually exiting Xvesa sticks you back into 80x25 but I used 
Xvesa one one terminal and was writing mail at a shell account on the 
other and the 80x30 stayed there but stopped working.

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Ian Scott wrote:

> > > > How would you, on one line, set up an alias
> > > > to go into Xvesa
> > >
> > > I wouldn't.  Thats what xinit and ~/.xinitrc are for.
> > >
> > > > and load icewm and opera?
>
> (snip)
>
> > I have trouble understanding man pages but will try again.  I
> > would like
> > to know what this all means.
> >
> > > > can I set up several .xinitrc's and choose between them?
> > >
> > > man xinit
>
>
> Since you have confessed to a problem reading manpages, I have had a look at
> the xinit manpage for you.  It's a beaut!  If you find other manpages
> difficult, I don't fancy your chances with this one!  So I have distilled
> what I learnt from it:
>
> I suspect the answer you want is to use separate .xinitc's.
If you ever need help reading Albanian or even Bulgarian let me know - 
they are much easire for me than the 'manpage' language.

> e.g.
>
> create a /etc/xinitrc.opera file containing something like
>
> icewm&
> exec opera

In my case I created one with
xmodmap /root/xmodmap.84 & (I should put it in /etc instead of /root)
icewm&
opera&
rxvt

This lets me exit opera into rxvt (or toggle to it) and then exit X by 
exiting rxvt.

> This will start icewm and opera, then when you exit opera, X will close down
>
> Then set an alias like:
>
> alias O='xinit /etc/xinitrc.opera -- /usr/X11/bin/Xvesa -terminate'

In BL2 where I also set up Xvesa I have to specify resolution as well with
-screen 1024x768x15 - or I get the Xvesa default 640x480x4 which Opera 
won't work in any more (Opera 6 did even mono, 7 insists on 8-bit color or 
more).

What does -terminate do?  I would not work without it.

> By the way, the logic in xinitrc files is:
> - You want & at the end of the all lines except the last one
> - You want an exec before the last line
> - when the program on the last line exits, X closes down.

This is why I added & to the last line then rxvt on the next line, so that
rxvt would remain when I exited Opera.  I can also toggle to it to copy 
things to pico from Opera.

> i.e. in the example I have given, quitting opera would quit X.  Choosing
> quit from an icewm menu, however, would just close icewm, leaving opera
> running.

I will make similar aliases for xpdf, xv, links2, and abiword, since I 
rarely use X except for single programs and therefore don't want to use 
the menu to access them.

> Hope this helps.
It was a tremendous help.  I had not puzzled this out in over a year and 
the only other related suggestion was to run each program as a different 
user with a different .xinitrc.

Sindi