On Sun, Dec 22, 2024 at 06:42:01PM +0700, Ignat Insarov wrote:
> > > The HyperDoc system looks very dated to me as well. I do not see myself
> > > using it. To make matters worse, when I ask it to solve an equation, it
> > > tries to launch `xterm`, which is not available on my system, and hangs.
> >
> > What does "not available" mean here? 'xterm' is standard component
> > of X11, available in all Linux distributions that I know about and
> > in many other systems. Current Linux distributions allow you choice
> > of installed packages and you may decide to not install xterm.
> > Or do you mean that you are not allowed to add system components
> > to system that you use?
>
> What I mean is that `xterm` is something our forefathers wielded. Even
> X11 itself is optional now as Wayland is widely offered.
Well, there is fraction of open source developers that believe
that their moral duty is to break any software that is more than
few years old. However, there are also people who value
stability. Stability requires stable interfaces, and for
graphic current stable interface is X11. It is unfortunate, but
fact of the life that various "modern" layes quickly changed
in incompatible ways breaking software using it. 'xterm'
is part of that interface. It does not have to be actual
'xterm', but the issue is more tricky than you think. I tried
to start 'lxterminal' instead of 'xterm'. First trouble was
that 'lxterminal' does not accept some 'xterm' options and
fails to start due to unrecognized options. This can be worked
around with some loss of functionality (FriCAS passes window title
as an option to 'xterm', 'lxterminal' apparently makes up a silly
name without any way to change it). But after working around
this problem 'lxterminal' window pops up, but FriCAS output is
not there. ATM I do not know why, but there is protocol of
interaction between program and terminal emulator and
apparently it is different between 'xterm' and 'lxterminal'.
To be clear: FriCAS works fine when started from command line
in 'lxterminal', the trouble is when 'lxterminal' is started
from FriCAS.
Anyway, bottom line is: 'xterm' works, other terminal emulators
may require changes to FriCAS before they work.
> Even if maybe
> you can expect people to be able to install `xterm`, there is no
> reason to think they will like your opening an `xterm` window for them
> — this is one side of the _«dated»_ characteristic. A better way to
> open a terminal is to consult the `TERM` environment variable and open
> what it says.
Sorry, using TERM is quite wrong, TERM says how a program should
talk to a terminal, and not which _terminal emulator_ a program
should use. In particular, TERM may have values which correspond
to no terminal emulator.
I agree that it would be nice to have ability to start a different
terminal emulator, but ATM at least some terminal emulators do not
work.
--
Waldek Hebisch
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"FriCAS - computer algebra system" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To view this discussion visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fricas-devel/Z2hDFuwwEgbOdtdE%40fricas.org.
