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Re: Resizing problem


On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 8:50 AM, Jon TURNEY <jon.turney@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. ÂIf 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. ÂWhat's happening here is that you have no panel/taskbar running, so
> there is nothing to show minimized applications. ÂOpenbox 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." ÂWe 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] Âa Âlow-level Âkeyboard Âhook 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
>

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