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Re: Remote shell with X-window emulator

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg20040] Re: Remote shell with X-window emulator
  • From: paulh at wolfram.com (P.J. Hinton)
  • Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 18:46:06 -0400
  • Organization: "Wolfram Research, Inc."
  • References: <7shpp1$1qu@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

In article <7shpp1$1qu at smc.vnet.net>, mdj at physics.ucf.edu (Michael Johnson) writes:

>I'd like to run Mathematica on a departmental server, popping the
>window up on a desktop PC running an X-terminal emulator (Hummingbird's
>Exceed).  

Actually, software such as Hummingbird's eXceed is more than just an
emulator.  It is a real live X server running on your PC.  It just
doesn't come Win32 native versions of all of those nifty little X
shell tools like xset, xlsfonts and config tools like xfontsel and
editres.  Tools which perform adjustments to the X server's settings
are usually replaced by dialog boxes.

> This works except Mathematica can't find the needed fonts
>(which are on the server but not on the PC).  Can anyone suggest how to
>proceed?  I know essentially nothing about Exceed, but understand ordinary
>X setups.

At the root of your problem is the fact that X clients request fonts
from the X server, which means that the X server running on the PC
must have Mathematica's fonts available, either through a local 
installation or through an X font server running on a remote host.

The documentation that comes with the PC X server software is 
indespensible in configuring this properly.  You may want to hunt
down your copies or review the vendor's technical support FAQ site.

You will need to find out what font formats are supported navtively
by the X server (e.g. BDF, PCF, etc.) and then download local copies
of those fonts off the Mathematica installation on your machine.  
Because of filename length limitations, you may need to rename the
font files and adjust the fonts.dir file accordingly.  You will then
need to configure your X server (usually through an dialog box) so 
that it checks the local directory with the Math fonts when it is
looking for fonts.

The reason you may want to consider using or setting up an X font
server is that the font server can scale fonts properly so that 
you will have a wider range of font sizes beyond those offered by
bitmap fonts that servers usually support natively.

There are two FAQ pages on Hummingbird eXceed on Wolfram Research's
Technical Support FAQ site:

http://support.wolfram.com/Systems/Unix/PC/Exceed.html
http://support.wolfram.com/Systems/Unix/PC/Exceed6.html

--
P.J. Hinton
Mathematica Programming Group           paulh at wolfram.com
Wolfram Research, Inc.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone.


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