lkw@titan.UUCP (03/12/87)
Is there support out there for X on the Sun-3/110 (aka Prism) display?
Straight off the tape, it looks like it's ALMOST there, but not quite.
As long as the channel's open, a quick comment: the installation
instructions that come with X are a little, er, *sparse* to the
typical X virgin (or at least this X virgin...). I had no trouble
getting everything to compile (although I second the motion to make
the path to the library directory in the makefiles absolute instead
of relative to the bin directory), but section 3.8 of the installation
guide says, (very slightly paraphrased):
"To test the server, type 'X 0 0 &'. If everything succeeds, you
should get a grey background and a large X cursor on the screen."
Yup, sure did. THEN WHAT?!?! Nary a clue. Nice grey background, nice
large X cursor, but without xterm up, you can't kill that guy for love
or money.
"You should now be able to run any of the X programs."
Oh, really. HOW? It's not a pretty sight to see a grown man crying in
front of his workstation, which is now brought to him exclusively by
the letter "X"... My final solution was to log in over the net and
kill the server, but unless I handled the kill sequence just right, I
wound up with the keyboard mapped in an admittedly entertaining but
generally non-functional state. This was all on a Sun-3/160, by the
way.
The moral seems to be that you need an xpert over your shoulder to
learn X, or else you take a lot of interesting side trips. I think I'm
on my way to X enlightenment now, but I believe the experience has
left me better equipped to empathize with people who try to learn
UNIX with only the manual pages as their guide.
--
Larry Wake uucp: {ihnp4 | hplabs | psivax}!csun!lkw
CSUN Computer Center BITNET: RETPLKW@CALSTATE
Northridge, CA 91330 ARPA: RETPLKW%CALSTATE@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
"Put it on a plate, you'll enjoy it more."ken@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU.UUCP (03/14/87)
Well, the problem is that X support is strongest for Vax architectures and indeed X 0 0 is what you would type there. To be fair, it says in the installation manual that Xinit is what you should look at. Although no hint is given that Xsun should be linked to X. Another place the Vax bias shows is in the nil deref bugs in client code. I hope some site (Berkeley?) emerges as the Sun implementation support site. Or at least a place to collect gripes. Sun Microsystems seems bent on being different, so we Sun X users have to help each other. Ken