linux question

linux question

[Hans Hagen]

Hi,

I spoiled a couple of days installing linux [on this third laptop again my 
video chipset is not supported; in this respect linux is way behind 
windows]. I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems with starting 
the window manager. Does anyone know if window managers are supposed to run 
on newer drivers?

[I use suse7.1 but am slowly getting sick of the enourmous bunch of window 
stuff installed/loaded and getting rid of it seems impossible, so i wonder 
if i should continue with suse anyway. Are the otherw linux's leaner?] In 
any case i want a running linux/x for testing context on linux. [if i can 
get my old dos-extender stuff working on win200 i will stick to windows 
anyway since graphics are better there]

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: linux question

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Hi,

Tuesday, July 17, 2001 Hans Hagen wrote:

HH> I spoiled a couple of days installing linux [on this third
HH> laptop again my video chipset is not supported; in this
HH> respect linux is way behind windows].

Since Windows is (still) more widespread than Linux, manufacturers
are more interested in developing Windows drivers rather than
Linux'.

HH> I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems with
HH> starting the window manager. Does anyone know if window
HH> managers are supposed to run on newer drivers?

They are supposed to. Anyway, you might want to try a more recent
of the same wm.

HH> [I use suse7.1 but am slowly getting sick of the enourmous
HH> bunch of window stuff installed/loaded and getting rid of it
HH> seems impossible, so i wonder if i should continue with suse
HH> anyway. Are the otherw linux's leaner?]

You might want to give Mandrake 8.0 a chance. If you have an
NVidia video chipset, you need to download the latest drivers from
http://www.nvidia.com/Products/Drivers.nsf/Linux.html
and follow the instructions for "generic RPM distributions"

HH> In any case i want a running linux/x for testing context on
HH> linux.

What do you need X for? You just need teTeX, Perl and an a shell
... If you feel confused by the command line, give Midnight
Commander (mc) a chance.

HH> [if i can get my old dos-extender stuff working on win200 i
HH> will stick to windows anyway since graphics are better there]

(What do you mean "graphics are better"? Are you talking about the
cute icons?)

--
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Re: linux question

[Mohit Agarwal]

*** Hans Hagen wrote in conTeXt list today at 10:55 +0200:

: I spoiled a couple of days installing linux [on this third laptop
: again my video chipset is not supported; in this respect linux is way
: behind windows]. I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems
: with starting the window manager. Does anyone know if window managers
: are supposed to run on newer drivers?

No, linux is not behind windoughs.  I've faced problems due to Intel
motherboards (specifically D815EEA), but the X configuration has never
been a problem, there have been problems configuring the sound card,
though.  What drivers do you have?  The updates for linux are far more
rapid than windoughs, so running a window manager shouldn't be a problem.
Specific things can surely be answered on the XFree86.org list (the
archives might as well help); please see

   http://www.xfree86.org/mailman/listinfo

: [I use suse7.1 but am slowly getting sick of the enourmous bunch of window
: stuff installed/loaded and getting rid of it seems impossible, so i wonder
: if i should continue with suse anyway. Are the otherw linux's leaner?] In
: any case i want a running linux/x for testing context on linux. [if i can
: get my old dos-extender stuff working on win200 i will stick to windows
: anyway since graphics are better there]

Please switch over from Suse to other linux distributions, but *not* to
windoughs.  Debian should be a nice option (woody should be realeased soon
;-), even Mandrake is not bad.  Well, these days most of the distributions
are really huge, but there are several things that you won't need.  If you
select the packages yourself, it shouldn't be big.  I don't quite tend to
agree that graphics are better on windoughs, no.  If linux is configured
properly, then you have a lot of utilities that can't be imagined
otherwise.  For instance, you have the ImageMagick utilities, which
provide commands like `convert', `animate' which are really powerful.

mohit

Re: linux question

[Taco Hoekwater]

Hans Hagen wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I spoiled a couple of days installing linux [on this third laptop again my
> video chipset is not supported; in this respect linux is way behind
> windows]. I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems with starting
> the window manager. Does anyone know if window managers are supposed to run
> on newer drivers?

Yes, they should. Most likely cause: incorrect (read: partial) update to
Xfree4.

likely problems: 

- Suse is confused about what to run
- The server itself (the "X" executable) is still the old one
- The Config file is broken/missing (XF4 uses /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 )
- Dynamic library problems.

Do you get any kind of error when you start X?

Greetings, Taco

Re: linux question

[Tobias Burnus]

Hi Hans,

> I spoiled a couple of days installing linux [on this third laptop again my
> video chipset is not supported; in this respect linux is way behind
> windows].
This is not neccessarily true: There big bussiness now supports Linux
very well. The problem are mostly caused by small no name cards or
special cards from far east.
If you have a SiS card (I had one) you should update to XFree86 4.1.0.
The same is true if the card is very new.
Get:
  SaX2 from

ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/ftp.suse.com/suse/i386/X/XFree86/SaX2/suse71/
  X11R6.5.1 by XFree86 from:
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/ftp.suse.com/suse/i386/X/XFree86/XFree86-4.1.0-SuSE/suse71/

> I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems with starting
> the window manager. Does anyone know if window managers are supposed to run
> on newer drivers?
Internally there has much changed (as with the output routine in
ConTeXt) but the interface is nearly unchanged. I suspect rather -- as
Taco does -- a X config error.

Can you update SaX2 and XFree86 and make sure that they are really
installed.
Re-run "sax2". (For NVidia see below)
If it doesn't work post the output of:
xf86version
sax2 -v
sax2 -p
rpm -q sax2 xdevel xextra xf86 xf86tools xfnt100 xfntcyr xfntscl xloader
xman xmodules xshared xxprt
# Only: xshared xf86 xloader sax2  need to be uptodate
hwinfo --log=foo.log --all

For a better font quality you simply need to install the microsoft true
type fonts by using /usr/X11R6/bin/fetchmsttfonts. (Check that
/etc/X11/XF86Config contains   FontPath     
"/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype"). The advantage is that this is a
scalable font (there are tons of bitmap fonts) and that with
qt-experimental (I think the packages is called like this) all Qt
applications can use antialising for fonts (XFree86 rendering
extention).

Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:
> Since Windows is (still) more widespread than Linux, manufacturers
> are more interested in developing Windows drivers rather than
> Linux'.
Well this is going to be changed: Now all big manufactors have
developement teams for Linux.

> HH> I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems with
> HH> starting the window manager. Does anyone know if window
> HH> managers are supposed to run on newer drivers?
> They are supposed to. Anyway, you might want to try a more recent
> of the same wm.
In theory the programs shouldn't see a difference between X11R6.4 and
X11R6.5(.1) and between XF86 3.x and XF86 4.0.x(4.1.x). The only program
which had problems was XDVI: The XF 3.x version didn't show the buttons
in 4.x.

> HH> Are the otherw linux's leaner?]
> You might want to give Mandrake 8.0 a chance.
We had some problems with Mandrake (so some of our Linux specials at our
physics department say that if RedHat then the original not the copy
[Mandrake is based on RedHat]). Since we want to switch the OS of our
computer pool from FreeBSD to Linux we also have now this problem of the
right distribution: RedHat, SuSE or Debian. I think for you Hans, Debias
wouldn't be the best choice since it is an "expert" distribution ;-)

> If you have an
> NVidia video chipset, you need to download the latest drivers from
> http://www.nvidia.com/Products/Drivers.nsf/Linux.html
> and follow the instructions for "generic RPM distributions"
This cannot be packed by Linux distributions due to copyright problems
...

> HH> In any case i want a running linux/x for testing context on
> HH> linux.
> What do you need X for?
For having more than one console at a time (you don't really want to
suggest to split the console, do you) and for XDVI/acroread etc.

> You just need teTeX, Perl and an a shell
> ... If you feel confused by the command line, give Midnight
> Commander (mc) a chance.
mc is a kind of Norton Commander, but I think Hans is not that fast
confused ;-)

> HH> [if i can get my old dos-extender stuff working on win200 i
> HH> will stick to windows anyway since graphics are better there]
> (What do you mean "graphics are better"? Are you talking about the
> cute icons?)
Well Windows does support antialised fonts -- Unix doesn't (XFree86
4.1.x has the render extentions which can be used by Qt and Gtk+ (latter
to come). Moreover the fonts of X11 are rather bad (almost only bitmap
fonts). (You can use MS TT fonts ;-)

Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> > I spoiled a couple of days installing linux [on this third laptop again my
> > video chipset is not supported; in this respect linux is way behind
> > windows]. I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems with starting
> > the window manager. Does anyone know if window managers are supposed to run
> > on newer drivers?
> Yes, they should. Most likely cause: incorrect (read: partial) update to
> Xfree4.
So think I.

> likely problems:
> - Suse is confused about what to run
> - The server itself (the "X" executable) is still the old one
> - The Config file is broken/missing (XF4 uses /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 )
SuSE: /etc/X11/XF86Config for 4.x
      /etc/XF86Config     for 3.x
but the ...-4 is also found (see man page).

> - Dynamic library problems.

> Do you get any kind of error when you start X?
You can also look at /var/log/XFree86.0.log

Tobias

Re: linux question

[Hans Hagen]

At 01:46 PM 7/17/2001 +0200, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

>- Suse is confused about what to run
>- The server itself (the "X" executable) is still the old one
>- The Config file is broken/missing (XF4 uses /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 )
>- Dynamic library problems.

this is all ok, 30 meg of new code, right drivers, right config ...

>Do you get any kind of error when you start X?

from the xfree log i deduce that the server loads ok, but then when i 
manage to quit the black screen, just before reboot, i see that pixmaps are 
missing or connections refused or all kind of alarming messages.

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: linux question

[Hans Hagen]

At 01:27 PM 7/17/2001 +0200, Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:

>What do you need X for? You just need teTeX, Perl and an a shell

GS and acrobat and maybe netscape -)

>(What do you mean "graphics are better"? Are you talking about the
>cute icons?)

no, acrobat; actually i like the gnome icons most

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: linux question

[A. Villaveces]

Hi,

my own laptop experience with ConTeXt and linux has been excellent. I
use both
RedHat 7.1 on one laptop and Mandrake 8 on the other one. So far, most
of my
use of ConTeXt has been on the laptop with RedHat. It works beutifully.
And
the graphics, enhanced with the gimp, look nicer than they would on the
same
laptop with windows.

Window Manager I use: enlightenment. It is lean (compared to KDE and 
Gnome).
I did not install KDE (it is too windowish for my taste) but did install
Gnome.
So, altough I do not run Gnome as the base wm (enlightenment looks nicer
and
is faster), I may at will use all the goodies Gnome comes equipped with.

Before switching to windows (which would be a real loss), I would
suggest you to
try RedHat 7.1 and/or Mandrake 8. The tetex on both comes with ConTeXt,
and, for
me at least, it has worked very smoothly.

Cheers,

Andres Villaveces.

Hans Hagen wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I spoiled a couple of days installing linux [on this third laptop again my
> video chipset is not supported; in this respect linux is way behind
> windows]. I updated to Xfree 4 and now seem to have problems with starting
> the window manager. Does anyone know if window managers are supposed to run
> on newer drivers?
> 
> [I use suse7.1 but am slowly getting sick of the enourmous bunch of window
> stuff installed/loaded and getting rid of it seems impossible, so i wonder
> if i should continue with suse anyway. Are the otherw linux's leaner?] In
> any case i want a running linux/x for testing context on linux. [if i can
> get my old dos-extender stuff working on win200 i will stick to windows
> anyway since graphics are better there]
> 
> Hans
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                                    Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
>                        Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
>   tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------

pdf not read by acrobat ?!?!?

[A. Villaveces]

Hi all,

I have produced recently a very nice document with ConTeXt, loaded with
graphics. I always open it locally with xpdf, which renders it
perfectly. I tried to open the same document under Acrobat Reader, and
for some reason the reader claims there is some error with the document.

This only happens with this new, ConTeXt-produced document (otherwise
Acrobat works normally). And the document seems ok (as xpdf can read it
perfectly).

Has anyone of you had this situation? Does anyone know what to do in
this case?

(One reason I need to be able to open it is for quality printing: the
place where they have the good printers is windows-based, so I want them
to be able to open the file with Acrobat... unless anyone suggests some
other option).

Andres Villaveces

Re: linux question

[siep]

On 17 Jul, Hans Hagen wrote:
> At 01:46 PM 7/17/2001 +0200, Taco Hoekwater wrote:
> 
>>- Suse is confused about what to run
>>- The server itself (the "X" executable) is still the old one
>>- The Config file is broken/missing (XF4 uses /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 )
>>- Dynamic library problems.
> 
> this is all ok, 30 meg of new code, right drivers, right config ...
> 
> 
>>Do you get any kind of error when you start X?
> 
> from the xfree log i deduce that the server loads ok, but then when i 
> manage to quit the black screen, just before reboot, i see that pixmaps are 
> missing or connections refused or all kind of alarming messages.
> 
> Hans
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                                    Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
>                        Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
>   tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Which connections?  The missing pixmaps sound innocuous. With
Ctrl-Alt-F1 you can look at the original text console to read the
text at your leasure, and with Alt-F7 you can go back to the
graphics screen. You can also have a look at a file such as
.xsession-errors; I am not sure whether all distributions use this
name.

As to window managers, Icewm is mean, lean, very easy to configure and
use, and ugly.

If you want to deinstall stuff: when I used SuSE I didn't take
dependencies too seriously. But I have no experience with recent
SuSE distributions.

Siep

Re: linux question

[Hans Hagen]

At 04:58 PM 7/17/2001 +0530, Mohit Agarwal wrote:

>though.  What drivers do you have?  The updates for linux are far more

nvidia stuff, the latest, unfortunately nvidia does not permit vendor of 
commercial x drivers to support them;

after studying los and so i found out that the problem was with x itself 
and especially kde and friends, so i set the startup to windowmaker and it 
works quite well [still no usb mouse].

sound is ok [but i have to redo it] and, kind of funny, it was the only 
thing kde could start up, an enourmous windows startup sound clip -)

otherwise.  For instance, you have the ImageMagick utilities, which
>provide commands like `convert', `animate' which are really powerful.

actually, i run those on the windows machine for years now, much unix stuff 
is nowadays available on windows. one reason for me to use windows is that 
our editing env is dos/win based [which is why i'm working on texwork for 
both platforms] and most fo all, because fabrice always very fast provides 
me pretty good latest pdftex binaries. Also, ghostview on windows is good 
and acrobat only available on windows.

I want to play with linux for: (1) texwork, (2) context in cvs and (3) 
document compile farm and (4) context on demand; most organizations we work 
for use windows so i need both platforms.

Hans

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: linux question

[Hans Hagen]

At 03:52 PM 7/17/2001 -0500, A. Villaveces wrote:

>So, altough I do not run Gnome as the base wm (enlightenment looks nicer
>and
>is faster), I may at will use all the goodies Gnome comes equipped with.

so, there is a speed issue? interesting.

>try RedHat 7.1 and/or Mandrake 8. The tetex on both comes with ConTeXt,

i may try them indeed

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: pdf not read by acrobat ?!?!?

[Hans Hagen]

At 03:58 PM 7/17/2001 -0500, A. Villaveces wrote:

>I have produced recently a very nice document with ConTeXt, loaded with
>graphics. I always open it locally with xpdf, which renders it
>perfectly. I tried to open the same document under Acrobat Reader, and
>for some reason the reader claims there is some error with the document.
>
>This only happens with this new, ConTeXt-produced document (otherwise
>Acrobat works normally). And the document seems ok (as xpdf can read it
>perfectly).

which version of pdftex / context / acrobat?

>Has anyone of you had this situation? Does anyone know what to do in
>this case?
>
>(One reason I need to be able to open it is for quality printing: the
>place where they have the good printers is windows-based, so I want them
>to be able to open the file with Acrobat... unless anyone suggests some
>other option).

There are problems with files produced by pdftex and acrobat 5.

(1) widgets, i adapted context
(2) fonts, tom kacvinski adapted pdftex

although both are more adobe/acrobat problems, pdftex is now okay. The font 
problem had to do with the new cool type dll's not supporting subsetted 
encoding arrays in the proper way [and more]. I've run quite some 
complicated tests [most of this happened off line between 
fabrice/tom/me/few people] with many fonts and it seems to work ok. Another 
improvement of pdftex is that pdf inclusion is more efficient. [btw, in 
general, if you use the context figure base stuff mentioned on our site, 
figure inclusion is much faster anyway]. This means that page imposition 
[texexec etc] is very efficient now. This version of pdftex will go on 
texlive, and the windows version can be found at the fptex site.

So, if you have problems: take the latest context, pdftex and it should work.

Hans

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: linux question / lucida fonts

[Hans Hagen]

At 04:07 PM 7/17/2001 +0200, Tobias Burnus wrote:

I installed / updated all modules [takes w hole day to download] and the 
problem is now in the windows manager.

>For a better font quality you simply need to install the microsoft true
>type fonts by using /usr/X11R6/bin/fetchmsttfonts. (Check that
>/etc/X11/XF86Config contains   FontPath
>"/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype"). The advantage is that this is a
>scalable font (there are tons of bitmap fonts) and that with
>qt-experimental (I think the packages is called like this) all Qt
>applications can use antialising for fonts (XFree86 rendering
>extention).

aha, i will look into that ! this also brings up the lucida again: maybe 
it's worth to look into making a nice setup for them, since they are in 
linux as well as windows

right distribution: RedHat, SuSE or Debian. I think for you Hans, Debias
>wouldn't be the best choice since it is an "expert" distribution ;-)

ah, that would make me an expert -)

Let me know what linux you will choose!

>mc is a kind of Norton Commander, but I think Hans is not that fast
>confused ;-)

-) BTW, on windows i use 4dos/4NT; going back to command.com is then a 
nightmare

> > Yes, they should. Most likely cause: incorrect (read: partial) update to
> > Xfree4.
>So think I.

one thing i found out is that after an install, you need to wait an hour to 
let the background jobs finish; suse launches them late and some of their 
results are needed !

 > Do you get any kind of error when you start X?
>You can also look at /var/log/XFree86.0.log

indeed, and there it now looks ok,

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: pdf not read by acrobat ?!?!?

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

A. Villaveces schrieb:
>perfectly. I tried to open the same document under Acrobat Reader, and
>for some reason the reader claims there is some error with the document.

Would you tell us, *what* error occurrs? (font? 'defect'? ...)

>This only happens with this new, ConTeXt-produced document (otherwise
>Acrobat works normally). And the document seems ok (as xpdf can read it
>perfectly).

I had problems with xpdf, because it couldn't display embedded fonts of
pdfs but only wanted to use the gs fonts: that means, what seemed
perfect with xpdf coulnd't work with Acrobat. But I don't know if your
error is mine.

-- 
Grüßlis vom Hraban!
---
http://www.fiee.net/   (Formelsammlung)
http://www.angerweit.de/        (Musik)
http://www.ramm.ch/          (Privates)

Re: linux question

[siep]

On 18 Jul, Hans Hagen wrote:
> At 04:58 PM 7/17/2001 +0530, Mohit Agarwal wrote:
> 
> after studying los and so i found out that the problem was with x itself 
> and especially kde and friends, so i set the startup to windowmaker and it 
> works quite well [still no usb mouse].
> 
> Hans
> 

USB requires kernel support (kernel 2.4 or maybe 2.2.1x with backported
USB patches).

Siep

Re: pdf not read by acrobat ?!?!?

[Hans Hagen]

At 01:28 PM 7/18/2001 +0200, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:
>A. Villaveces schrieb:
> >perfectly. I tried to open the same document under Acrobat Reader, and
> >for some reason the reader claims there is some error with the document.
>
>Would you tell us, *what* error occurrs? (font? 'defect'? ...)

the file does not print, i.e. the pdftops export/print filter is crap

concerning viewing: from now on always embed the not so standard 14 base fonts

I had problems with xpdf, because it couldn't display embedded fonts of
>pdfs but only wanted to use the gs fonts: that means, what seemed
>perfect with xpdf coulnd't work with Acrobat. But I don't know if your
>error is mine.

i'll send you a couple of files,

Hams
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: linux question

[Ed L Cashin]

I'm a bit late, but I feel sympathetic to your desire to move away
from GUI-bloat!  ;)

Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> writes:

...
> [I use suse7.1 but am slowly getting sick of the enourmous bunch of
> window stuff installed/loaded and getting rid of it seems
> impossible, so i wonder if i should continue with suse anyway. Are
> the otherw linux's leaner?]

I'm also a user who prefers lean, responsive software.  A lot of linux
distributions come with KDE or GNOME configured to run, but you don't
have to use them.  

Siep mentioned icewm.  That's the window manager I use, because it's
light and has excellent keyboard support (you don't have to reach for
the mouse all the time).  The default keyboard commands are
reminiscent of Windows keyboard shortcuts.  

After a fresh install I configure the system *not* to boot into X, and
then I create a ".xinitrc" file in my home directory, along with a
".xsession" file in case I ever do start using xdm or some other
X-Windows-based login utility.

In the .xinitrc file, I have these lines:

  xset s off
  exec ssh-agent icewm

The first line turns off the default X screen saver and the second
tells the "ssh-agent" tool to invoke the icewm window manager.  I use
the ssh-agent to handle ssh keys -- it's a convenient way to have to
type my password only once and still access many machines in a secure
way.  

"exec" means that if someone kills X, they won't get my shell prompt.
If you're not interested in ssh-agent, this will work:

  exec ssh-agent icewm

-- 
--Ed Cashin                   PGP public key:
  ecashin@terry.uga.edu       http://www.terry.uga.edu/~ecashin/pgp/

Re: pdf not read by acrobat ?!?!?

[A. Villaveces]

Sorry for the long delay, Hans, Hraban and you all! I was away from
Bogota, in
a place with no really workable connection for some days! Here are some
answers,
questions and followup.

Hans Hagen wrote:
> 
> At 03:58 PM 7/17/2001 -0500, A. Villaveces wrote:
> 
> >I have produced recently a very nice document with ConTeXt, loaded with
> >graphics. I always open it locally with xpdf, which renders it
> >perfectly. I tried to open the same document under Acrobat Reader, and
> >for some reason the reader claims there is some error with the document.
> >
> >This only happens with this new, ConTeXt-produced document (otherwise
> >Acrobat works normally). And the document seems ok (as xpdf can read it
> >perfectly).
> 
> which version of pdftex / context / acrobat?

pdftex: 3.14159-13d-2.1 (Web2C 7.3.1)
context: 2000.1.31 fmt: 2001.7.10
acrobat: 4.2

> 
> >Has anyone of you had this situation? Does anyone know what to do in
> >this case?
> >
> >(One reason I need to be able to open it is for quality printing: the
> >place where they have the good printers is windows-based, so I want them
> >to be able to open the file with Acrobat... unless anyone suggests some
> >other option).
> 
> There are problems with files produced by pdftex and acrobat 5.
> 
> (1) widgets, i adapted context
> (2) fonts, tom kacvinski adapted pdftex
> 
> although both are more adobe/acrobat problems, pdftex is now okay. The font
> problem had to do with the new cool type dll's not supporting subsetted
> encoding arrays in the proper way [and more]. I've run quite some
> complicated tests [most of this happened off line between
> fabrice/tom/me/few people] with many fonts and it seems to work ok. Another
> improvement of pdftex is that pdf inclusion is more efficient. [btw, in
> general, if you use the context figure base stuff mentioned on our site,
> figure inclusion is much faster anyway]. This means that page imposition
> [texexec etc] is very efficient now. This version of pdftex will go on
> texlive, and the windows version can be found at the fptex site.
> 
> So, if you have problems: take the latest context, pdftex and it should work.

Are there easy patches to the latest context and pdftex? How different
are they
from the versions I have? I would like to avoid having to rebuild from
the very base tetex!

Followup: after many other attempts (with the same system), I produced
later on a document readable by Acrobat. I cannot tell what essential
difference there was. I just kept working on the context document, until
at some point (days later) I tried again to visualize the new version on
Acrobat, and it worked! (it did not claim the file was corrupt as
before).

I have, however, a few other questions on context, but for the sake of
clarity, I prefer to ask them in a separate message.

Thanks for your help!

Andres Villaveces

wrong listoffigures name in spanish!!!

[A. Villaveces]

Hi you all!

For some strange reason, when I use context to produce a long-winded
document in Spanish (using \mainlanguage[sp]), the name of the list of
figures appears as

ilustracions 

instead of

ilustraciones

as it should appear!

I do not know what file controls all the mapping between English (or
Dutch :) names for chapters, hyphenation, etc. into Spanish. Everything
else seems to work fine (the syllabic breaks pattern in particular is
perfect!). But it is quite annoying to get Ilustracions
instead of Ilustraciones!

There must be some file somewhere that controls these changes. Could you
please help with this?

Thank you!

Andres.

a problem with left margin or edge

[A. Villaveces]

Hi again,

for some strange reason, \setuplayout[] does not seem to act on left
margins or edges. I have been unable to change them by using
\setuplayout[leftmarginwidth=xxcm] and the like. I tried all the
parameters that appear on the documentation with no effect.

When using \showlayout, I get values of 0.0 cm for leftmargin and
leftedge, even when I "set them up" to be different from 0. The width of
the text DOES work. Right margins and edges do work. But ConTeXt seems
to have something preventing it from changing left margins!

Any help would be strongly appreciated!

Andres Villaveces
Bogota - Colombia

nice left lines?

[A. Villaveces]

Dag!

A small question to the context people: on some of the documentation
pdfs, there appear some nice "left margins": fat yellow lines on the
left of the text. How did you produce such nice things?

A document with these is the readme.pdf ( precisely
/.../texmf/doc/context/base/readme.pdf on tetex distros), on page 1.

Dank U!

Andres Villaveces.

Re: pdf not read by acrobat ?!?!?

[Hans Hagen]

At 11:26 PM 7/26/2001 -0500, A. Villaveces wrote:
>Sorry for the long delay, Hans, Hraban and you all! I was away from
>Bogota, in
>a place with no really workable connection for some days! Here are some
>answers,
>questions and followup.
>
>Hans Hagen wrote:
> >
> > At 03:58 PM 7/17/2001 -0500, A. Villaveces wrote:
> >
> > >I have produced recently a very nice document with ConTeXt, loaded with
> > >graphics. I always open it locally with xpdf, which renders it
> > >perfectly. I tried to open the same document under Acrobat Reader, and
> > >for some reason the reader claims there is some error with the document.
> > >
> > >This only happens with this new, ConTeXt-produced document (otherwise
> > >Acrobat works normally). And the document seems ok (as xpdf can read it
> > >perfectly).
> >
> > which version of pdftex / context / acrobat?
>
>pdftex: 3.14159-13d-2.1 (Web2C 7.3.1)
>context: 2000.1.31 fmt: 2001.7.10
>acrobat: 4.2

you run a pretty old pdftex, we have 14h-unofficial now, which has many 
improvements and tries to catch acrobugs

also: in case of troubles watch the logfile, since it reports missing font 
and so

> > So, if you have problems: take the latest context, pdftex and it should 
> work.
>
>Are there easy patches to the latest context and pdftex? How different
>are they
>from the versions I have? I would like to avoid having to rebuild from
>the very base tetex!

pdftex: just get the precompiled binaries

context: normally you only have to download the context zip and regenerate 
the format

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: a problem with left margin or edge

[Hans Hagen]

At 11:38 PM 7/26/2001 -0500, A. Villaveces wrote:
>Hi again,
>
>for some strange reason, \setuplayout[] does not seem to act on left
>margins or edges. I have been unable to change them by using
>\setuplayout[leftmarginwidth=xxcm] and the like. I tried all the
>parameters that appear on the documentation with no effect.
>
>When using \showlayout, I get values of 0.0 cm for leftmargin and
>leftedge, even when I "set them up" to be different from 0. The width of
>the text DOES work. Right margins and edges do work. But ConTeXt seems
>to have something preventing it from changing left margins!
>
>Any help would be strongly appreciated!

the margins are virtual, the main ones are

topspace
backspace
width
height

headers and footers are path of the height
margins and edges are virtual and positioned relatively
so, try to change backspace

Hans

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: nice left lines?

[Hans Hagen]

At 11:44 PM 7/26/2001 -0500, A. Villaveces wrote:
>Dag!
>
>A small question to the context people: on some of the documentation
>pdfs, there appear some nice "left margins": fat yellow lines on the
>left of the text. How did you produce such nice things?

There are several methods,

(1) simple backgrounds:

% output=pdftex

\starttext

\setupcolors
   [state=start]

\setupbackgrounds
   [text][text]
   [frame=on,
    rightframe=off,
    topframe=off,
    bottomframe=off,
    framecolor=red,
    rulethickness=1mm,
    frameoffset=.5cm]

(2) metapost backgrounds

\setupbackgrounds
   [page]
   [background=DemoFrame]

\defineoverlay[DemoFrame][\reuseMPgraphic{DemoFrame}]

\startreusableMPgraphic {DemoFrame}
   StartPage ;
   Field[Text][Text] := Field[Text][Text] enlarged .5cm ;
   draw (llcorner Field[Text][Text] -- ulcorner Field[Text][Text])
     withcolor green withpen pencircle scaled .5cm ;
   StopPage ;
\stopreusableMPgraphic

Method 2 can also use the values from setup commands, see metafun manual.

>A document with these is the readme.pdf ( precisely
>/.../texmf/doc/context/base/readme.pdf on tetex distros), on page 1.

did you take a look at www.pragma-ade.com? the new readme looks different -)

BTW, i'm working on a navigational shell for all documentation

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: wrong listoffigures name in spanish!!!

[Hans Hagen]

At 11:33 PM 7/26/2001 -0500, A. Villaveces wrote:
>Hi you all!
>
>For some strange reason, when I use context to produce a long-winded
>document in Spanish (using \mainlanguage[sp]), the name of the list of
>figures appears as
>
>ilustracions
>
>instead of
>
>ilustraciones
>
>as it should appear!
>
>I do not know what file controls all the mapping between English (or
>Dutch :) names for chapters, hyphenation, etc. into Spanish. Everything
>else seems to work fine (the syllabic breaks pattern in particular is
>perfect!). But it is quite annoying to get Ilustracions
>instead of Ilustraciones!
>
>There must be some file somewhere that controls these changes. Could you
>please help with this?

in your case: lang-ita.tex,  it says:

\setupheadtext [es] [figures=Ilustraci\'ons]

Just send me patches of what is wrong and i'll change it,

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

doc shell (was: nice left lines?)

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Hans Hagen schrieb:
>BTW, i'm working on a navigational shell for all documentation

VERY GOOD IDEA!
(I had the plan to do such myself, but I tinkered around with my
first PHP-MySQL-web-thing the last weeks, and now I've to work
on my move to Switzerland...)

-- 
Grüßlis vom Hraban!
---
http://www.fiee.net/   (Formelsammlung)
http://www.angerweit.de/        (Musik)
http://www.ramm.ch/          (Privates)

Re: linux question

[Berend de Boer]

Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> writes:

> I spoiled a couple of days installing linux [on this third laptop
> again my video chipset is not supported; in this respect linux is way
> behind windows]. 

Hmm, on a laptop you get the latest Windooze + drivers, if you attempt
to install from an old Windooze CD, you would get the same problems. I
usually have the reverse problems, i.e. Windows 2000 not supporting stuff
like my IR port.

Just get the latest version and all should be fine. Most of the time
I'm a happy user of RedHat 7.1. Linux sometimes freezes, and after
suspend, the pccard doesn't seem to be reinitialized properly so I
have to take it out and reinsert it.

-- 
Groetjes,

Berend. (-:

Re: linux question

[Berend de Boer]

Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> writes:

> from the xfree log i deduce that the server loads ok, but then when i
> manage to quit the black screen, just before reboot, i see that
> pixmaps are missing or connections refused or all kind of alarming
> messages.

Log should be in /var/log/XFree86.0.log or /var/log/XFree86.9.log

-- 
Groetjes,

Berend. (-:

Re[2]: linux question

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Tuesday, July 17, 2001 Hans Hagen wrote:

>>Do you get any kind of error when you start X?

HH> from the xfree log i deduce that the server loads ok, but then when i 
HH> manage to quit the black screen, just before reboot, i see that pixmaps are 
HH> missing or connections refused or all kind of alarming messages.

Instead of rebooting you can:
(1) kill the server with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace
or
(2) have a look at the log on the console window from where you
started the server
or
(3) after the reboot, have a look in /var/log to find the stored
logs.

Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta