On 20 Nov 2007, at 11:30:02, Nathaniel Gray wrote:
On Nov 20, 2007 2:41 AM, Martin Costabel <email@hidden> wrote:
Jeremy Huddleston wrote:
Honestly, I think that's not a good idea. For one thing, X11.app
(which
has the preferences you are talking about) doesn't launch xterm at
start. The /A/U/X11.app executes the command 'xterm' then quits.
xterm
then connects to the $DISPLAY socket. launchd starts /u/X/X11.app
(the
one with the preferences) which launches Xquartz, etc...
Reasonably, there should be a PreferencePane that you can open with
System Preferences, without having to run X11.app. And instead of
(or in
addition to) the Dock item, there should be a menu bar item,
similar to
what you have for Bluetooth, Airport or Spaces. Then you could run
the entries from the X11 Applications menu from that menu bar drop-
down
menu, also without having to start X11.app first. This would solve
a lot
of the usability problems.
I basically like this idea, but I don't know how you would account for
all the windows that have no dock icons.
Why not go even further and totally disassociate the X-server and
Xquartz window manager from X11.app. Add X-windows to System
Preferences > System. The key preference item would be the Enable
checkbox. If checked, the X-server and Xquartx window manager are
started when the system boots. As I always run X applications, I
would prefer to have the default setting for this to be enabled.
People that do not use Apple or X terminal applications could disable
X windows to minimize the demand on system resources.
Other preferences that could be set would be the system-wide default
characteristics of the xterm window, i.e. background color, slidebar,
geometry, etc. It could provide a choice of using xterm or xterm-
color for the default window. Another preference could be system-wide
PATH additions.
With the above in place, X11.app becomes simply a means to open an
interactive xterm window with the user's preferred shell. In essence,
it would be little different from Apple's new Terminal.app released
with Leopard. With Terminal.app now behaving like an xterm and
allowing me command line access to X applications without the funky
"open" command prefix, I find that the reason for using X11.app has
largely disappeared.
This disassociation would mean that X11.app would be simplified to
"xterm -ls". The X11.app preferences could then be expanded to set
user specific preferences regarding shell, path, and xterm
characterisitcs to override the system-wide defaults set in System
Preferences > System > X-Windows.
Merton Campbell Crockett
email@hidden
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