Re: Resizing problem
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 8:50 AM, Jon TURNEY jon.tur...@dronecode.org.uk wrote: On 15/07/2010 18:02, Olwe Melwasul wrote: I installed cygwin/xcygwin 1.7.5 with KDE. I don't know where you got KDE from, but it's not in the standard cygwin distribution. If you have problems with KDE, perhaps you should try the place you got it from. I tried clicking on XWin Server from the Start menue, but nothing happened. I tried startx from the cygwin basic terminal. Nothing. After some Google archaeology, I found someone that had done this: cd \cygwin\bin ash PATH=. rebaseall -v at the DOS command. Good. It worked. Running startx at the cygwin command did start a twm session. But how the KDE would run, I couldn't figure out from any amount of documentation or Googling. Given the rest of this email, I find it hard to believe that the documentation you read included 'man Xwin' or the Cygwin/X User Guide [1] If you did, and you found it unclear, I'd welcome your suggestions as to how to improve that documentation. I don't think I'd want to try. I'd likely have too many questions. And my feelings would either be bolstered by people like Ken Brown who answered these initial questions promptly and accurately with patience, or trampled rudely and brusquely as is Jon Turney's habit. Yes, I've seen other Jon Turney's responses, and they're not winning the cygwin cause many friends. I'm not your typical newbie from hell, and if I'm having this level of trouble with cygwin/Xcygwin out of the box, let that be a barometer that your product lacks proper documentation. After all, how many casual Windows users curious about GNU/Linux who found Xcygwin not working out of the box (still not working after reading your spotty Xcygwin user's guide) would have Googled around for a solution? I found the rebase all and it worked. Why? I still don't know. But do you expect a real beginner to have gone to those lengths? As for where I got my distro, I chose the ucalgary mirror because it's one of the closest to me here in Minnesota. If the ucalgary mirror is dealing bad source, is that my fault? I'm a GNU/Linux user who has to teach a course on GNU text/file manipulation tools to students who've never seen GNU/Linux and will probably not want to install it on their laptops. Therefore I have to get cygwin going on their computers. I think I can limp along now After some more Googling, I saw a reference to an Openbox. Guessing along, I got startx /usr/bin/openbox to give me Openbox. My problem is that I cannot minimize anything because it goes down below and out of sight. Nope. What's happening here is that you have no panel/taskbar running, so there is nothing to show minimized applications. Openbox is just a Window Manager. The XWin container window is sized on start up to my right computer screen, but when I drag it over to my larger left screen, it can't be resized. from 'man XWin': The display mode can not be changed once the X server has started. We do not currently support resizing the X screen of a running X server. I suspect Openbox has a default size larger (lower?) and down in the hidden part is no doubt either a task bar with the minimized apps or the minimized apps themselves, right? Wrong, as explained above. Alt-Tab only cycles the Win7 apps, not the XWin session apps, BTW. This behaviour is by design. [2] If you want to allow the X server to capture alt-tab key presses, you should read about the -keyhook option in 'man XWin': -[no]keyhook: Enable [disable] a low-level keyboard hook for catching special keypresses like Menu and Alt+Tab and passing them to the X Server instead of letting Windows handle them. And indeed 'startx /usr/bin/openbox-session -- -keyhook' gives you an openbox session where you can switch windows using alt-tab. It's kind of unfortunate that the default configuration of openbox and the X server interact in this way to make it difficult to work out how to get your minimized applications back, and we could certainly do with some words in the User's Guide about using the WMs we provide, but that would best be written by someone who actually uses them, which isn't me :-) Actually, I don't need the startx version, I could very well use the startxwin multi-windows version IF I could get Emacs in shell mode to do cygwin bash. Starting the X server and then Emacs multi-windows style gets a shell mode that apparently doesn't see cygwin. I'm guessing it's using the DOS command. How can I a) get at the minimized apps? or b) how can I get a stand-alone X server-run Emacs to see cygwin bash? [1] http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/cygwin-x-ug.html [2] http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ug/using-switching.html -- Jon TURNEY Volunteer Cygwin/X X Server maintainer -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ
Re: Resizing problem
If you people simply want to flame me, fine. But everything I said is true: a) I had problems that no true Windows newbie could have solved from reading any amount of your documentation. b) this or that man page is NOT documentation. (Man pages will eventually be outlawed under the Geneva Convention as a form of torture.) c) after not finding answers, I spent three days searching for this and that clue, scavenger-hunt-style... d) ... where I encountered many of Jon T's answers, and, yes, they were all quite brusque and patronizing -- which put me off wanting to get on your mailing list. e) ...where I got some good help from a nice young man, but then patronized by a not-so-nice person who blew off all my legitimate complains and problems to patronize me -- as he has done many others. f) Microsoft's main dig against open source software still has a ring of truth to it, i.e., whenever you leave the customer-provider business relationship (where there's money on the table and even laws), you very well might encounter this sort of attitude and behavior. That being, of course, providers who don't care about customers, or don't even see end-users as customers, but as hoards of pests sucking up their valuable time with frivolous questions. So if cygwin is on the front lines of trying to win Windows users over to GNU/Linux, then we have a problem. I, for one, would expect cygwin to be inundated with clueless newbies who are a) not very computer saavy (e.g. what newbie would have done a rebase all?) b) nervous and in a hurry about deviating so far from Big Redmond Brother, i.e., not good with challenging documentation, likely to do stupid things. c) needing lots of hand-holding and not much scolding. I could go on (and on and on), but I hope you got my drift. Olwe Grand Marais, MN -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
Re: Resizing problem
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Christopher Faylor cgf-use-the-mailinglist-ple...@cygwin.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 03:03:07PM -0500, Olwe Melwasul wrote: If you people simply want to flame me, fine. But everything I said is true: 1) No one flamed you. Flaming is what you are doing now. The flaming started when I had complaints and they were blown off and or criticized. 2) You are not a customer. You have no rights to anything here. The flow of obligation does not go from us to you. We are doing you a favor by providing you with software and answering your questions. If you don't want to use the software or don't like the answers you're getting then it will not affect us in the slightest if you stop. Again, Microsoft's whole point. 3) The point of this project is to provide a UNIX/Linux environment primarily for people who know UNIX/Linux. The documentation on our web site presupposes that. If you don't like man pages then you have found the wrong project. I'm a very typical user coming from the Linux side who will be introducing GNU/Linux to the non-GNU/Linux crowd. I can't believe this isn't typical. 4) Cygwin is not a movement. It is just a collection of programs which a number of people have made available for free. Then those people and others have volunteered their time to create documentation and answer questions. You're welcome. 5) When you say that it took three days to do ...X you want us to conclude that it was hard to find X. An alternate conclusion is that you aren't very adept at finding things. I mention this because it may not be clear to you that some of your indignant remarks are working against you. 6) This is an open source project which accepts contributions. So, if you truly want to do more than try to convince us that you like to rant then provide us with concrete suggestions, ideally in the form of actual changes to the documentation which you so decry. If you can't be bothered to provide concrete suggestions and insist on making personal observations, vague complaints, and pseudo-philosophical pronouncements then we will all happily conclude that you are YA internet loon who can be safely ignored. I'd say offer tutorials and guides that include known issues. This is very common in other OS projects. Do some hand-holding on-line. Don't patronize people. And no, man pages are not suited for newbies as guides or tutorials. They're for pros who know what they're doing. If you want to do the latter then use the cygwin-talk mailing list as you'll be off-topic here. If you want to provide concrete suggestions for improvement then go ahead. We'll be happy (seriously) to see them. cgf Yeah, well, any normal person would have given up on this long ago, not put up with any patronizing, and most certainly not put up with being massively flamed. So no, I'm not normal. Good bye cygwin! -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
Re: Resizing problem
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 5:07 PM, DePriest, Jason R. jrdepri...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 4:40 PM, Olwe Melwasul wrote: I'd say offer tutorials and guides that include known issues. This is very common in other OS projects. Do some hand-holding on-line. Don't patronize people. And no, man pages are not suited for newbies as guides or tutorials. They're for pros who know what they're doing. I frequently learn almost everything I need to know about an application by using its man pages as well as its info doc if it has it. One of the finest moments in my introduction to *nix was when I discovered I could learn about any command by simply typing 'man command'. I'd love it if Windows had a similar feature. Not to be patronizing, but by definition, if someone knows what they are doing, they won't check out a man page anyway. If you want to know about Cygwin try the Cygwin User's Guide http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/cygwin-ug-net.html. It has plain English explanations about how Cygwin works. There is also the FAQ http://cygwin.com/faq.html which may answer some of the whys or why nots that the UG skims over. I read the UG and FAQ a few times a month and I always find what I am looking for or learn something new. If you want to get deep into Cygwin's past, I'd suggest doing a custom Google search with 'site:cygwin.com/ml/cygwin' to search strictly the mailing list archives. Finally, if you *do* happen to find any tutorials about how to do things with Cygwin and they aren't on the cygwin.com website, they are probably outdated and are definitely not supported by the Cygwin core team. For example, I know there are several old tutorials on getting ssh to work with Cygwin. They are wrong. Oh, Cygwin specific bits of trivia about installed packages can be found in /usr/share/doc/Cygwin. Again, don't dis' the man page. Try 'man bash' or 'man grep' for examples of excellent man pages with examples and detailed explanations. If you have it installed, try 'man nmap'; the source of the man page is the same source used to build the online documentation. 'man' is one of the most useful commands there is. Please don't discount it as some esoteric, propeller head gizmo. After my last email, I a) went down to the lake (Superior) and stuck my head underwater until the steam stopped bubbling up b) took some horse tranquilizers c) read the Wikipedia article on Mother Teresa I'm okay now. Yes, I'll do that, Jason. And yes, man pages are actually beautiful. W. Richard Stevens (Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment) said that it's very important to learn how to read code. I guess learning how to wade through man pages is similar; after all, it's just a step above reading the source code. Yes, batteries may be included, but some heavy lifting may be required. O GM, MN -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
Resizing problem
I installed cygwin/xcygwin 1.7.5 with KDE. I tried clicking on XWin Server from the Start menue, but nothing happened. I tried startx from the cygwin basic terminal. Nothing. After some Google archaeology, I found someone that had done this: cd \cygwin\bin ash PATH=. rebaseall -v at the DOS command. Good. It worked. Running startx at the cygwin command did start a twm session. But how the KDE would run, I couldn't figure out from any amount of documentation or Googling. After some more Googling, I saw a reference to an Openbox. Guessing along, I got startx /usr/bin/openbox to give me Openbox. My problem is that I cannot minimize anything because it goes down below and out of sight. The XWin container window is sized on start up to my right computer screen, but when I drag it over to my larger left screen, it can't be resized. I suspect Openbox has a default size larger (lower?) and down in the hidden part is no doubt either a task bar with the minimized apps or the minimized apps themselves, right? Alt-Tab only cycles the Win7 apps, not the XWin session apps, BTW. Actually, I don't need the startx version, I could very well use the startxwin multi-windows version IF I could get Emacs in shell mode to do cygwin bash. Starting the X server and then Emacs multi-windows style gets a shell mode that apparently doesn't see cygwin. I'm guessing it's using the DOS command. How can I a) get at the minimized apps? or b) how can I get a stand-alone X server-run Emacs to see cygwin bash? Olwe Bottorff Grand Marais, MN -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
Re: Resizing problem
Yes, I am using the emacs-X11 and yes, I started it (after starting the X server to get multiwindowed mode) with emacs at the cygwin command. Emacs-X11 comes up fine, looking good. Then I do M-x shell to get a shell environment inside of Emacs. But what comes up is not bash. I'm not sure what it is, but it sees no cygwin apps: It doesn't know what ls or which diff or any other GNU/cygwin stuff is. I assume it is the DOS shell. Oddly, if I start emacs-X11 inside the windowed mode (startx) and do emacs shell mode, it does see bash and the rest of the GNU/cygwin apps. O GM, MN On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Ken Brown kbr...@cornell.edu wrote: On 7/15/2010 1:02 PM, Olwe Melwasul wrote: [...] Actually, I don't need the startx version, I could very well use the startxwin multi-windows version IF I could get Emacs in shell mode to do cygwin bash. Starting the X server and then Emacs multi-windows style gets a shell mode that apparently doesn't see cygwin. I'm guessing it's using the DOS command. I can't comment on the first part of your post, but I'm Cygwin's emacs maintainer and can try to help you get emacs running. If you want to run emacs under X, install the emacs-X11 package and then type 'emacs' in an xterm window. If something doesn't work the way you expect, please give a precise recipe for reproducing the problem. I don't know what you mean by a shell mode that apparently doesn't see cygwin. Ken -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/ -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
Re: Resizing problem
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Ken Brown kbr...@cornell.edu wrote: On 7/15/2010 3:51 PM, Olwe Melwasul wrote: Yes, I am using the emacs-X11 and yes, I started it (after starting the X server to get multiwindowed mode) with emacs at the cygwin command. Emacs-X11 comes up fine, looking good. Then I do M-x shell to get a shell environment inside of Emacs. But what comes up is not bash. I'm not sure what it is, but it sees no cygwin apps: It doesn't know what ls or which diff or any other GNU/cygwin stuff is. I assume it is the DOS shell. Oddly, if I start emacs-X11 inside the windowed mode (startx) and do emacs shell mode, it does see bash and the rest of the GNU/cygwin apps. [Please don't top-post.] I think the problem is that your PATH isn't set correctly inside emacs. How are you starting the X server? If you use the start menu shortcut (with target C:\cygwin\bin\run.exe /usr/bin/bash.exe -l -c /usr/bin/startxwin.exe) you shouldn't have that problem. Notice that it uses 'bash -l' precisely so that the environment, including PATH, is set up in the normal way. Ken I started the X-server with the menu shortcut (which has the execute string you listed) and ... after ... a full minute it delivers a stand-alone xterm. I then click on the Emacs-X11, and after a long wait, it comes up. I do an M-x shell -- and get a sh-3.2$ prompt. I try some commands, and it only seems to know a few. cd does get me to /home/Olwe which tells me it must have something to do with cygwin, but it knows no other GNU/cygwin other than perhaps pwd. Next, I kill it and start Emacs-X11 in the xterm emacs . It comes up fine. I do M-x shell -- and get the identical prompt I got in xterm, namely, o...@olwe-pc $ I type commands and they work -- it sees the GNU/cygwin apps fine -- but it leaves odd characters after it returns, e.g. $ which diff /usr/bin/diff ^[]0;~^G The last string is not random, it has some method to its madness. For example $ ls dbus-4xiZFwCMPa dbus-U6vB5c6MSd dbus-hdtwMyVbXA dbus-yXQ8LOSIN3 ]0;/tmp Actually, I copied the above output and lost the ^[ and the ^G, but they show up on the emacs shell output. Next, I kill emacs-X11 stand-alone and start emacs -nw in the xterm. Same funky characters. I try other consoles -- same funky characters. Again, the windowed mode doesn't have these problems, just the issues with minimized apps disappearing beyond the bottom of Openbox. If I could just get rid of the funky xterm characters, I'd call it a day -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
Re: Resizing problem
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 9:20 PM, Ken Brown kbr...@cornell.edu wrote: I should have added that you should see /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/emacs.README for more information about that script and the shortcut it creates. Ken make-emacs-shortcut was in /bin. There was nothing in the .../README about it, though. README talked about a source code compile and install of Emacs. So what exactly should I do with make-emacs-shortcut? I clicked on it from WinManager and it did something, now I get normal bash behavior from the non-X11 console (e.g. default cygwin console and mintty) when I start emacs no window. When I start multiwindowed, same good behavior. Will look into PS1 environment stuff. And BTW, thank you very much. Olwe Grand Marais, MN -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/ FAQ: http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/
