Okay, you X'ers, how the he...
Mark Gerolimatos
frustrated:
How the hell do you get out of X (on a Sun)?!?!?!?!?
I've had to do the EMACS trick (fork a shell, and kill the parent),
but that always leave my keyboard acting like a f--king stupid DEC
something-or-rather (okay, WHY do keyboards all have to look like DEC
something-or-rathers in X? Perhaps the key-station approach was not
the best? Naw, couldn't be!...Okay, Schiefler, where's your elegant come-back?).
And also, does anyone out there have a REAL window manager? You know,
one with menus, so that I don't have to do an
ESC-META-CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-LEFT-THEN-RIGHT-MOUSE-BUTTON to close a window?
Anyone ever seen GMW? Now THAT'S a windowing system!
"For over a quarter of a century..."
Mark Gerolimatos
ARPA: gero...@ford-wdl1.arpa "Let's take our neighbor for a ride!
UUCP: {sun,fortune}!wdl1!gerolima Would you like to go for a ride!?"
AT&T: (415) 852-4105 "Uuhhhh...no thanks."
USPS: c/o Ford Aerospace "No what?" "No, I wouldn't like to go."
3939 Fabian Way "Go Where!?" "Uuhh...for a ride..."
Palo Alto CA 94303 "A RIDE! Now that's a good idea!"
Mail Stop X20 -Frank and a friend, from Blue Velvet
woh...@sri-spam.uucp
>Okay, Eksers, I got a queston...excuse my flamo-attitude, but I'm getting pretty
>frustrated:
>
> How the hell do you get out of X (on a Sun)?!?!?!?!?
markie,
yours seems to be common problem. i bet you do a `xinit -e uwm` in
some incantation or another. that doesn't leave you with much of a
shell to run in the open console window.
try instead, the following: `xinit -C -n console -e ~/.X -- Xsun 0 -a 2`
and my .X file looks something like, well a lot like:
#!/bin/csh -f
sed "s/\([^ ]*:0\)/$DISPLAY/g" < ~/.uwmrc > /tmp/uwmrc$$
mv /tmp/uwmrc$$ ~/.uwmrc
uwm &
xsetroot -gray &
xclock =106x106+648+4 &
xhost [hostnames deleted]
exec $SHELL
note that the last thing that is done is to exec your favorite
shell in the console window to give you something reasonable to work
with.
now you can get the hell out of x (on your sun)--simply exit your
shell (^D, exit, etc.). the shell will die, taking x with it.
R...@zermatt.lcs.mit.edu.uucp
okay, WHY do keyboards all have to look like DEC
something-or-rathers in X? Perhaps the key-station approach was not
the best? Naw, couldn't be!...Okay, Schiefler, where's your elegant come-back?).
Fixed in Version 11. (Put it in a appropriate font to make it look elegant.)
Details will be available soon, in the Beta Test protocol document.
Bob Sutterfield
I just send a kill signal to the console window. Typing
`exit' to its shell will do, as will opening it and using the xterm
menus to generate the signal. It's ugly, because all the clients will
complain to the real console screen that their sockets are no longer
connected to the server, but it works quickly.
And when the server gets the SIGKILL it will exit politely and
restore your keyboard.
> ... And also, does anyone out there have a REAL window manager? You
> know, one with menus, so that I don't have to do an
> ESC-META-CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-LEFT-THEN-RIGHT-MOUSE-BUTTON to close a
> window?
You forgot the step about spinning in your chair and yelling
`Viva Quebec' three times really loudly.
Another alternative would be to configure your .uwmrc or
.menuwmrc in a manner less distasteful to you. When my cursor is in
the background stipple, the window manager (menuwm in my case) takes
naked mouse hits and gives appropriate menus. If you'd like a look at
today's configuration, let me know and I'll send it your way as an
example.
> Anyone ever seen GMW? Now THAT'S a windowing system!
Once again, this particular problem is not with the window
system, nor with the window manager, but with the user-configurable
parts of it. The defaults you get `out of the box' aren't that hot,
but you can fix it easily with your favorite text editor and without
recompiling.
Perhaps the defaults are the way they are (usable but
unexciting), to encourage people to really *think* about they way they
want their window manager to feel?
-=-
Bob Sutterfield, Department of Computer and Information Science
The Ohio State University; 2036 Neil Ave. Columbus OH USA 43210-1277
bob@ohio-state.{arpa,csnet} or ...!cbosgd!osu-eddie!bob
soon: b...@aargh.cis.ohio-state.edu
Karl.Kl...@cbstr1.att.com
gancarz@decvax writes:
> The other part of the reason was to avoid overwhelming the novice user.
Um, are you kidding? No flame, I'm serious. I can't believe that
controllified-metafied-shifted mouse hits are supposed to be easier on
the novice's sensibilities than naked mouse hits, as in SunWindows.
I keep picturing an X novice who's reasonably expert in Suns in
general, including SunWindows, who sits down at his screen with his
mouse in his right hand and his DrPepper in his left, only to find out
that he has to keep putting the DrPepper down in order to metafy mouse
hits.
No, thanx; give me the naked mouse hits any day.
Karl
Jean Marie Diaz
>I keep picturing an X novice who's reasonably expert in Suns in
>general, including SunWindows, who sits down at his screen with his
>mouse in his right hand and his DrPepper in his left, only to find out
>that he has to keep putting the DrPepper down in order to metafy mouse
>hits.
Hmph. Me, I don't put down my 7up. I use my elbow. :-)
AMBAR
ARPA: am...@eddie.mit.edu UUCP: {backbones}!mit-eddie!ambar
Mike Wexler
getting quite common now. I'm curious what people think of them.
If you would take a few minutes to fill out the following survey,
I would appreciate it.
1. Do you interfaces where shift, control, meta, etc... modify mouse
presses.
Yes: _ No: _
Why:
Alternatives:
2. Do you like context sensitive key presses(i.e Right key does menu
in root, scroll down in scroll bar, and select when inside a text
window).
Yes: _ No: _
Why:
Alternatives:
3. Should options like close window, move window, etc. apply to the
currently active window or should the user pick the action and then
point to the window.
Active window: _ Point at window: _ Other: ______________________
Why:
4. Should icons stay with the window they replace, or should they move
to a standard area of the screen.
Stay: _ Move: _
Why:
5. List the things you most like about window systems you have used.
6. List the things you most dislike about window systems you have
used.
Please return the your comments to me and I will summarize to the net.
Mike Wexler UUCP: seismo!uunet!peregrine!mike
ATT: (714)855-3923 INTERNET: mik Mof the tt
Robert Hagens
>that he has to keep putting the DrPepper down in order to metafy mouse
use foot pedals for meta keys. Then I could keep my Coke in my hand...
Rob Hagens
UW Argo Project
Skip Montanaro
I agree completely with Karl Kleinpaste. I'm one of those foolish
computer types who refuses to search for manuals before trying
something. If we're going to have X terminals some day for our
clerical and secretarial staff, they had better come up with a more
intuitive interface. I have plunked myself down in front of a
publicly accessible X machine several times and attempted to get it to
do something. Nothing but funny X-shaped cursors and ASCII BELs. Back
to NeWS and SunView...
Skip| ARPA: mont...@ge-crd.arpa
Montanaro| UUCP: mont...@desdemona.steinmetz.ge.com
(518)387-7312| GE DECnet: advax::"mont...@desdemona.steinmetz.ge.com"
Russell Nelson
read the documentation. I just sat down in front of a Sun 3/50 and a friend
type 'xinit' for me. I was lost. I have minor experience with a Macintosh
and a Symbolics Lisp Machine. I finally found out that you also have to
run a window manager. I tried xwm and couldn't get it to do anything. Maybe
I'm a dunce, and X is designed for the novice. Maybe not.
-russ
k...@hpcvlo.uucp
button events to do its business. This complaint has been brought up
before. Note that this is really not a generic X problem but a window
manager design problem.
One strategy that has been used by some people (and is present in the
HP version of uwm) is to allow uwm to recognize interesting events that
are only interesting in the root context. Thus if left button down is
only specified to uwm as a root window context event then uwm will not
steal the left button from the applications (like xterm). This allows
you to move the mouse to the root window to perform uwm functions and
hold your 7-up/coffee/juice (I use yogi tea) in your left hand. I am
willing to send the five uwm files modified to those who need them. I
modified the Xv10r4 release of uwm. I have only tried it out on my HP
equipment.
Also I have just recently been notified of one bug in the modified
uwm. If an application tries to read only button up events, then the
application does not see anything. Applications trying to read up and
down events or just down events work like a champ. If you have the
modified version and have found/fixed this bug please send me mail.
Otherwise I am going to fix it in the immediate future.
Also I am swamped at work, so I hope I do NOT get swamped with
requests. Have some patience with another poor working X hacker.
-Ken Bronstein
hp-pcd!ken
Niels Mayer
>general, including SunWindows, who sits down at his screen with his
>mouse in his right hand and his DrPepper in his left, only to find out
>that he has to keep putting the DrPepper down in order to metafy mouse
>hits.
>
>No, thanx; give me the naked mouse hits any day.
>
>Karl
This issue has already been hashed and rehashed on
comp.windows.news... There's nothing in X that says you must use your
meta key to perform window manager operations. That's entirely up to
the window manager. Nobody is forcing you to use uwm, its just that
uwm/menuwm/.... are readily available and work in the
least-common-denominator X-window environment: windows that do not
have active regions supporting window manager operations; windows that
require modified mouse clicks to separate the application mouse
actions from the window manager actions.
For example, imagine a high level application building toolkit built
on top of X, HP's Xray, DEC's Xtoolkit, etc. These
applications-building tools may define a window-style using
Macintosh-like (actually Xerox Star-like) active regions that allow
window manager operations to be performed. The application-building
kit would also contain a window manager that would know how to move,
resize, top, bottom, and iconify windows based on naked keyclicks in
the aforementioned active window regions. It would also perhaps let
the META key modify the mouse clicks to perform wm operations on
applications that use plain X.
So instead of making silly sweeping generalizations about X itself, we
should be examining the lack of a UI and window management standard
between X applications. I'm sure there are gaggles of programmers
looking at this problem right now.
It would be interesting to get a discussion going on the subject of UI
under X windows.
Is X easy to use??? No. Is unix easy to use?? Nope. Could we provide a
set of stadard initialization files (and programs) that will bring up
an X system as a programming environment rather than a bag-o-tools?
Certainly... but that will require both time and work.
Hmmmm.... looks like that compile finished.... time to get back to work.
-- Niels Mayer
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.
Karl.Kl...@cbstr1.att.com
First, I am sorry if I caused a rehash of a rehash of a rehash of an
issue. That was not my intent, and I hope this doesn't continue it.
Second, the one reason for my posting was in the one quoted line of
its precedent posting, which said
> The other part of the reason [for the existing defaults]
> was to avoid overwhelming the novice user.
My followup article questioned only this one claim: that the current
set of defaults (requiring 2-handed X driving) is optimal for
overwhelm-avoidance in the novice's mind.
I am not arguing against the defaults *in general* because I
understand that [a] uwm just happens to be the existing window manager
and one could write another and [b] uwm is highly configurable and
hence the defaults are not engraved in stone.
My lone, sole, single, isolated complaint is that 2-handed driving for
a window system, particularly on machines where other window systems
exist (such as Suns, of course), is a bad set of defaults to inflict
on the *novice*.
OS experts are expected to get used to the intricacies of kernels and
the more esoteric utilities available (such as, say, awk in UNIX). X
experts can similarly be expected to manage with bizarre and not
necessarily intuitive arrangements of mouse/keyboard hits.
But you don't hand a UNIX beginner anything tougher than ed(1) for an
editor, and you shouldn't hand an X beginner a mouse that has to be
metafied.
And to think that my followup was written 3 weeks ago, but got stuck
in someone's buggy news system in Columbus...sheesh.
Karl
Karl.Kl...@cbstr1.att.com
gan...@decvax.UUCP writes:
> I'd
> give you 100-1 odds that the standard default environment won't
> please everyone. Hence, the desirability of a user-programmable
> user interface.
Certainly. No one expects to please the world. But one would do well
to introduce the world to something new in a more gentle fashion.
Perhaps 2 sets of defaults would have been appropriate, one for naive
novices, and one for experienced users who need a base from which to
customize. Just a thought, and it might be a bad thought at that.
> What you're hinting at is that, since someone else has already done
> it one way, then that way must be right. Or is it?
Not at all. The only thing I'm arguing for is the Principle of Least
Astonishment.
The conditioned user of another window system walks up to an X
display, tries to do a few things, can't seem to get much out of it,
and then a local expert tells him to metafy a mouse button. The
novice says, "I have to WHAT?" P-of-LA violation.
He's *used* to naked mouse bindings, so give him what he's *used* to
while at the same time showing him what he could do if he'd get used
to metafying those buttons. It seems you're giving the novice the
full power of uwm all at once. Can the power be stepped down sanely?
If X had been the first window system, then users would have become
conditioned to it first, and the question they'd ask when walking up
to the next window system is, "OK, which meta/shift/ctrl keys do what
with this mouse?" X has the disadvantage that it was not first. That
is also an advantage in that it has learned from many of the mistakes
of the past.
> (By the way, did you know that the Macintosh uses meta keys in its user
> interface? Surprised? I was, too.)
Yes, I found out about that quite a while back. And as one who seldom
uses a Mac, I don't care for it - but again that's just me,
personally, a Mac novice.
Karl
Peter Su
>> (By the way, did you know that the Macintosh uses meta keys in its user
>> interface? Surprised? I was, too.)
>
>Yes, I found out about that quite a while back. And as one who seldom
>uses a Mac, I don't care for it - but again that's just me,
>personally, a Mac novice.
>
>Karl
One should point out though, that the Mac uses meta keys only for very
special operations, or quick hacks. You don't need to use them to do
"normal" things like moving windows about and stuff.
Generally, Mac programs use the shift/option/command keys for shortcuts,
like option-click in the close box closes all open windows when in the
finder sorts of things.
Pete
--
ARPA: hu...@gnome.cs.cmu.edu
UUCP: ...!{ucbvax,ihnp4,cmucspt}!hu...@gnome.cs.cmu.edu
"There are reports that many executives make their decisions by
flipping coins or by throwing darts, etc. It is also rumored that
some college professors prepare their grades on such a basis."
- Donald Knuth