XWN740 X-Windows Configuring and Using Running X Clients (Chapter 7: Pages )‏

Agenda Running X Clients: Running X Clients Background Operation Geometry Running non-graphical Applications

X Windows & Hardware Running X Clients Since most X applications don't need to interact directly with user, they can be run in the background. The ampersand symbol & follows the command to run in the background. If the terminal (that initiated the X application) is closed, it may close the application, unless the nohup command is used (i.e. The “No hangups” command...)‏

X Windows & Hardware Examples: xcalc (will terminate if terminal window that started xcalc closes) nohup xcalc (xcalc will continue to run if terminal window closes)‏

X Windows & Hardware Storing Stderr / Stdout When running X applications in the background, standard error (stderr) messages my not be displayed in the graphical X Windows session. In this case, the application can be run at the shell prompt while redirecting stdout and stderr to a file to be viewed from the shell prompt to help understand what went wrong...

X Windows & Hardware Example nohup kcalc > kcalc.log 2>&1 & How it works: Standard output (stdout) from “nohup kcalc” command is redirected to a file called kcalc.log. After stdout has been redirected to file, any standard Error (stderr) message is also added to kcalc.log file...

X Windows & Hardware Geometry Geometry refers to the size and position of windows. The size and position of an application window can be set by the user from the command-line, but also the window manager can force its own window geometry.

X Windows & Hardware Geometry Specification WIDTH x HEIGHT [+-] XPOSITION [+-] YPOSITION WIDTH and HEIGHT are units of measurement depending on application (eg. Pixels for apps like kcalc and characters for apps like xterm)‏ XPOSITION and YPOSITION indicates vertical coordinates (in pixels) from the screen corner A plus sign (+) indicates coordinate from upper-left corner of the screen and a minus sign (-) indicates coordinate from lower-right corner of the screen...

X Windows & Hardware Examples xterm -geometry 80x xterm -geometry 80x xterm -geometry 80x xterm -geometry 80x

X Windows & Hardware xwininfo Useful X windows utility to determine size (geometry) of a specific open window application.Just issue the command in your graphical enviroment, then click on the specific window for information. The xwininfo command with the -size option can provide information for character-based information to be converted into pixel information....

X Windows & Hardware Running Non-Graphical Applications Many applications have been written with a character- based interface intended for use with a terminal (console). Examples of these applications range from typical Linux commands such as ls, cp, mv to more elaborate text- based applications such as vi, Midnight Commands (mc), etc....

X Windows & Hardware Running Non-Graphical Applications X Windows itself is incompatibe with all character-based applications (i.e. X itself does not provide a termios interface like text-based console does) To solve this problem, terminal emulator applications can be used to run a program in a console that provides a termios interface.

X Windows & Hardware Examples xterm -T “Vi Editor” -e vi Gnome-terminal -t “Vi Editor” -e vi Konsole -T “Vi Editor” -e vi You can refer to coure notes “X Powertools” page 117 for other cool examples....