cmc@ecrc.de (Chris Crampton) (04/04/91)
I would like to use the full OpenWindows environment but there are a few problems that I cannot seem to solve so that I end up using a mixed environment (MIT X server + OpenWindows clients) and even then somethings are not working correctly. Maybe someone else has already worked out how to get around these difficulties? My problems are as follows: 1) I want to force all mapped windows to have backing store. My machine has plenty of VM and I hate to see all of these tools slowly redrawing themselves if I re-expose a previously obscured portion of a window. I am using the the Window.Mono.DisableRetained and text.retained resources but they do not help with most tools (e.g. cm). With the MIT X server there is the -wm option to force all mapped windows to have backing store - is there something similar for xnews? (I can see nothing in the manual entry). Actually, even when I use the MIT server with -wm some XVIEW tools still redraw themselves when exposed (e.g. cm again). Why do I see these redraws anyway? I use other tools which are much better at doing one-shot updates (via offscreen pixmaps?) and this gives a tool a much better "feel". The lack of a way, in xnews, to make backing store a default along with the generally poorer performance are the main reasons why I use the MIT X server instaead of xnews. 2) When I use the calendar manager under the MIT X server then I get errors because of fonts not being available: XView warning: Cannot load font '-b&h-lucida-medium-r-normal-sans-*-90-*-*-*-*-*-*' (Font package) and then when I use month mode to view my calendar I get an illegible display and lots of errors like this: XView warning: invalid object (not a pointer), xv_get If I use the xnews server then it is okay. Do I need to get some extra fonts from somewhere or does cm require the xnews font machinery? 3) The mailtool often crashes my server when I am deleting messages. It is hard to say what exactly causes it but I think that the circumstances are: a. Running under MIT X (so this could be a server bug) b. Deleting messages from the bottom message. c. After the 8th message (usually) is deleted the mailtool window is extended to the bottom of the screen and the the server core dumps. The fact that the window is redrawn to the bottom of the screen suggests to me that maybe some bad values are perhaps being used for a RasterOp operation... Also, I am sure that the little flag in the mailtool icon does not always raise when it should do... 4) I am annoyed about there being no way to run tools in reverse video on black and white screens. 5) I use a larger font than the standard but I find that many of the Sun OpenWindows tools do not adjust themselves at all well to the larger font with text being clipped off, buttons overlapping and menus being messed up. Some larger fonts are better are handled than others so maybe this is a problem with fonts having incorrect metrics... (10x20 is an example of a poorly handled font). 6) iconedit core dumps when used under MIT X. It will start-up okay but as soon as I try almost any command (e.g. view) then I get "Handling error signal". It is okay under xnews. (Fonts again?) For the record, I am using a SPARCstation SLC with 16MB of RAM, but no disk, running SunOS 4.1.1 and the OpenWindows version 2.0 that came with 4.1.1. The MIT X server is the standard X11R4 server with all 18 patches applied. Can anyone help? Thanks, Chris. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Crampton. uucp: cmc@ecrc.uucp ..!unido!ecrc!cmc ECRC GmbH Internet: cmc@ecrc.de Arabellastrasse 17 D-8000 Munich 81 Germany Tel.: +49 89 92699 138