On Dec 15, 2007, at 7:17 PM, Merle Reinhart wrote:
> John,
>
> My apologies if I'm still not understanding your questions.
>
> What the /tmp/launch-xxxx/:0 format is pointing at is a unix socket
> which launchd is watching (do an ls on that file and you'll see that
> it is a socket; with lsof you can see that launchd is listening on
> it; and if you look at the launchd agent org.x.X11.plist
, you will
> see that when that socket is touched, X11.app is launched). If you
> leave it as such, then the system (in this case launchd) will
> noticed that something has touched the socket (in this case, your
> command trying to connect to the Xserver) and will start the Xserver
> for you if it is not already running. If you change DISPLAY to be :
> 0 then you'd see the all too familiar, unable to connect to display,
> message, unless you manually started the Xserver ahead of time.
>
> It is one of those things that until you actually try it, it is hard
> to understand why it is any better. But I found it to be an
> enormous time saver as I don't have to remember to manually start
> X11, etc. I just fire up Terminal and start using it and the system
> just does the right thing and if necessary starts the Xserver for me.
>
> As you point out, if the change is painful, you can still use the
> old way of manually starting up everything ahead of time.
>
> In my opinion, this is one of those interoperability things that
> makes a hugh stride forward for X11 apps being first-class citizens
> on the Mac. Yes, it takes a bit to get used to, but once you have,
> I at least don't want to go back (it is painful to go back to Tiger
> at work where I have to remember to start X11.app before starting up
> for the day).
>
> Also, I notice you talk about using xterm. I tend to use Terminal
> which runs without X11 being run. For the way I work, I have always
> found xterm to be a hindrance so I use Terminal instead. This may
> be some of the wide differences of opinion with the automagic
> launching capability of X11 (if you use xterm, then there are few if
> any advantages to the new way of using X11, but it is a huge
> advantage for those of us that use Terminal).
>
> The current way X11.app is setup, both situations are supported, so
> we both get our cakes.
>
> Merle
>
>
>
> On Dec 15, 2007, at 6:48 PM, John Koren wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Merle. It's either I do not understand your answer or I was
>> not clear in my question.
>>
>> What I was trying to ask is why the DISPLAY variable value that
>> launchd assigns needs to be so obscurely complicated ( e.g. /tmp/
>> launch-0l2xbx/:0) when setting it to standard ':0' seems to work as
>> well.
>>
>> After X11 starts, I can execute in xterm 'setenv DISPLAY :0' (csh)
>> and pop new X windows as well as with the '/tmp/launch-0l2xbx/:0'
>> that launchd assigned. Hence what do we gain from the '/tmp/
>> launch-0l2xbx' prefix?
>>
>> -John
>>
>>
>