From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 32349 invoked by alias); 11 Jan 2009 20:23:07 -0000 Received: (qmail 32341 invoked by uid 22791); 11 Jan 2009 20:23:07 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.8 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_40,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_LOW,SPF_PASS X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from out1.smtp.messagingengine.com (HELO out1.smtp.messagingengine.com) (66.111.4.25) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:22:20 +0000 Received: from compute1.internal (compute1.internal [10.202.2.41]) by out1.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D161209A22 for ; Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:22:18 -0500 (EST) Received: from heartbeat2.messagingengine.com ([10.202.2.161]) by compute1.internal (MEProxy); Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:22:18 -0500 Received: from [192.168.1.3] (user-0cej09l.cable.mindspring.com [24.233.129.53]) by mail.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id B001D455DA; Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:22:17 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <496A54F6.7020107@cwilson.fastmail.fm> Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:53:00 -0000 From: Charles Wilson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.19) Gecko/20081209 Thunderbird/2.0.0.19 Mnenhy/0.7.5.666 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cygwin@cygwin.com Subject: MinTTY "vs" rxvt (was Re: MinTTY 0.3.3) References: <20090111040508.GA8342@ednor.casa.cgf.cx> In-Reply-To: <20090111040508.GA8342@ednor.casa.cgf.cx> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com X-SW-Source: 2009-01/txt/msg00296.txt.bz2 Christopher Faylor wrote: > Just to contribute something useful: Chuck Wilson, if you are reading > this, am I correct in assuming that you don't enjoy maintaining the > Windows version of rxvt? Well, it's my main terminal. I tried MinTTY and I'm not sure yet whether it will supplant rxvt for my personal use, but it shows promise. > If so, should we consider deprecating rxvt in > favor of MinTTY when MinTTY becomes a real package? > > If not, there is no harm in keeping two packages in the distribution. I > was just trying to lighten your load if you were interested. I'd lean toward keeping both in the distro (mainly because I'd hate to see a never-ending flood of "where'd rxvt go?" queries. That'd be more of a pain than the relatively infrequent updates that rxvt gets). I'd certainly be one of the first encouraging new (and old) cygwin users to try MinTTY if they dislike the standard cmd console, don't want to use X, and are aware of the pty issue. > The other thing that I've always wanted was some way for the user to > choose what they want to run without running cygwin.bat by hand. I > think that would mean setup.exe modification though. You mean like another setup.exe pane (or option in an existing pane) to select the terminal that should be started by the "default" Cygwin link in the Start Menu? That's an interesting idea... Consolidated reply to Yaakov: > Or just switch rxvt to the regular X11 version w/o all the libW11 hackery? At one time, I toyed with the idea of creating two different rxvt packages (rxvt-W and rxvt-X), where neither was "split personality" but only operated in the specified windowing environment. Further, rxvt-W would be relatively stripped down (to only what libW11 supports, as currently), but rxvt-X would have all the bells and whistles turned on. The transparent "use X or Windows GDI" switching would be handled by the checkX program. Part of the reason for this 'diabolical plan': http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2006-03/msg00119.html "IMO the split personality is a bad idea: the worst of both worlds. rxvt is configured to support only the least common denominator options, those that BOTH modes can each support. So, no xft support ever. InheritPixmap is, err, at-your-own-risk. Plus, the underlying [builtin] W11 library is just as moribund as rxvt -- and the wrapper system means ALL library calls in EITHER mode must be handled by dlsym()." A wrinkle: the 'all singing all dancing' version of rxvt-X might require/support certain .Xdefaults options that the -W version doesn't, or a user might want them to be different. To support this, the -W version (or the -X version) would need a different XAPPRES name. But making this change would break existing setups. I never figured out how to handle this issue cleanly, which is part of why the idea died out. (The other was the complete lack of interest I got regarding a standalone, limited-functionality libW11). http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2006-03/msg00122.html http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2006-03/msg00121.html http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2006-03/msg00120.html One way to side step all of that is to partially implement it: new package: rxvt-X, all singing, all dancing rxvt becomes a wrapper package, using checkX. When X is detected, it launches rxvt-X. However, if X is not detected, it launches MinTTY. Later, if there is enough demand (complaints?) I can look at creating rxvt-W (with an alternate XAPPRES name) that is windows-only (maybe with the external libW11, maybe just like at present with the builtin libW11) -- but no split-personality. Those poor sods that insist on using it can (1) change the rxvt (wrapper) configuration to launch rxvt-W in windows mode instead of MinTTY (2) explicitly transfer their windows-compatible .Xdefault settings from the existing Rxvt: XAPPRES to the new RxvtW: XAPPRES prefix. However, in the meantime nothing actually *breaks* -- it just looks different. We might get a flood of "I launched rxvt and got MinTTY instead" which would be almost as bad as "where'd rxvt go?" but... cgf: hmm...how's that for "lightening my load"? Actually, this plan ^^^^^^ is a lot of work up front but would probably be extremely low-maintianence after that. -- Chuck -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/