From dmiller@newportnet.com Sun Feb 15 14:40:55 1998 Received: from newportnet.com by bloch.phys.uwm.edu via SMTP (950413.SGI.8.6.12/950213.SGI.AUTOCF) for id OAA20883; Sun, 15 Feb 1998 14:40:54 -0600 Received: from chuck (unverified [198.107.211.12]) by newportnet.com (EMWAC SMTPRS 0.83) with SMTP id ; Sun, 15 Feb 1998 12:31:00 -0800 Sender: dmiller@newportnet.com Message-ID: <34E74F17.3E325FD1@newportnet.com> Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 12:24:55 -0800 From: David Miller X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (X11; I; Linux 2.0.33 i486) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "T.C. Zhao" Subject: Re: Overview of XForms on 95/NT References: <9801311924.ZM4945@bloch.phys.uwm.edu> <34E5FB7B.8D4C73@newportnet.com> <9802141528.ZM18017@bloch.phys.uwm.edu> Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------101179F26EB566B9157CD8FC" Status: RO This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------101179F26EB566B9157CD8FC Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit T.C Looked over the overview I wrote, and have made several corrections, and minor additions. Sorry to have not more completely check it before sending it. I have attached an updated copy. Hope this does not cause you to much additional work. David Miller --------------101179F26EB566B9157CD8FC Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; name="Install.gnu-win32" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline; filename="Install.gnu-win32" XForms on NT By David W. Miller (dmiller@newportnet.com) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following is a brief outline of setting up a unix like development enviroment on MicroSoft NT operating system using the cygnus-win32 compiler suite of tools, along with the necessary librarys and X server to run X Window applications on the NT desktop. The necessary software is generally freely available, with some limitations, and has worked for the author on NT/4.0. The information presented here is not specific only to setting up X Windows for use with the great XForms programming library by T.C. Zhao, but was originally explored with that in mind. Any errors or omitions are those of the author. -- Development Suite-- Cygnus distributes a complete unix like enviroment targeted to the Win32 platform. It is a port of the well know GNU suite of tools, along with the necessary dll's to fill in the functions common to unix, but lacking in the Win32 API. This distribution comes in two forms, a user only enviroment, and a complete development enviroment. I'll direct my comment to the development enviroment, which contains the gcc compiler, gdb debugger, a tcl frontend for gdb, tcl interpreter, bash-2.01, ect. The Cygnus Win32 development enviroment can be obtained via ftp from ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/gnu-win32/gnu-win32-b18/ Get file cdk.exe. It's 13,729 KB, so downloading will take awhile. After downloading, simply run the self extracting archive to install it. Cygnus uses Install Shield, so the software can be removed thru the start/setting/ control panel/add-remove software if desired. I had several failures of the file to properly extract, due to not enough free disk space for temp files, but after freeing up some room, things worked fine. Seems to need alot of extra room. After installing the cygnus suite, read the readme, and set all of the enviromental variable ( watch the use of proper slashes in path as noted in the readme), and create the necessary directories discussed in the readme. Test the installation some to be sure all of the parts are working. It's real helpful to add bash.exe to your program menus. -- X Librarys -- Next you need a set of X libs to link against. There is a distribution of X11R6.3 built with the cygnus-win32 suite and some patches located at ftp://ftp.deninc.com/pub/ports/X11R6.3 Get file Wm32_X11R6_3.tar.gz, 7110 KB. Read the README-X11R6.3 file while downloading. It is a wealth of information and pointed me in the right directions. There are some links there which are not included here, as well as complete installation instructions. Briefly the procedure is: Create the /usr directory, change to that directory and copy the file Wm32_X11R6_3.tar.gz to /usr. Using the bash shell untar the X library distribution. The necessary patches to run the compiled binaries are in the directory /usr/X11R6.3/b18-patches. Change to that directory, and read the sergey.txt, and then run update.bat. This will install the patched version of the cygnus dll's. After that the b18-patch directory can be removed if desired. Add /usr/X11R6.3/bin to your path statement in the windows control panel. The X Windows dirstribution does not come with an X server, Window Manager, or xterm. So the next step is to get an X server. There are some additional xclients at ftp://microlib.cc.utexas.edu/microlib/nt/x11r6 -- X Server -- You will need an X server to handle the actual display. Not having alot of money to throw at this project (as in none), the following list are servers that are free of have a demo for evaluation. Several of these servers are quite resonably priced (IMHO). MI/X X server from MicroImages Free distribution, copyright MicroImages http://www.microimages.com/freestuf/mix/download.html 2 files getme1st.exe 332 KB file0001.bin 2,248 KB A free, although somewhat limited server. I could not get fdesign to work properly with this X server. It comes with the twm window manager. X-WinPro free demo with session time limit http://www.labf.com/xwpweb/ Click the download button in the left frame panel, after the next page loads, click the 32-bit button on the lower button panel, an information form will come up, fill in the information panel. A download page will come up, click the "Download now" link. file xwpe.exe 4,687 KB This is a nice X server, with a fairly inexpensive purchase price. fdesign works well on this server. This is my persional favorite. Pexus Systems X-Deep/32 Version 3.0 Free demos with session time limit, based on X11R6.1, comes with own Xlibs, twm window manager, and 40 clients. http://www.pexus.com/signeval.html You will have to fill in an information form, click "download" on the returned page, and then select to download version file eval30.zip 3,400 KB Approx I installed this in a seperate directory of it's own so it would not interfer with the X11R6.3 distribution, and then created shortcuts to it, to start the server. This is a nice X server. There are several other X servers available, but this should get you started. -- Running X Clients -- Once all of the pieces are in place, from a bash shell, start up the X server. Do this in the background, so you will be able to use the shell. After the server has started, to start an xclient, xclient -display localhost:0.0 & This will start the xclient, and send the display output to the default display of the localhost. Several xclients can be run on the same server. After having gotten and installed the XForms distribution for cygnus-win32, you should be able to fdesign -display localhost:0.0 & and have fdesign start up on the X server. Once you have the routine down, write a shell script call startx to start the X server, window manager, and which ever xclients you desire. Make it executable with chmod, and then it can be run from the bash shell to start up an X session. See the startx script with most any X windows distribution to get a basic format for startx. Several X server distributions came with no window manager, but the author had no trouble compiling twm from source. --------------101179F26EB566B9157CD8FC--