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Re: Mathematica 4.1 + Linux + gnome/sawfish

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg26949] Re: [mg26933] Mathematica 4.1 + Linux + gnome/sawfish
• From: "P.J. Hinton" <paulh at wolfram.com>
• Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 20:00:14 -0500 (EST)
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

On Fri, 26 Jan 2001 mitch_keller at my-deja.com wrote:

> I have a strange problem. I try to start Mathematica under
> gnome/sawfish, and it puts up the splash screen, but something goes
> awry at Initializing internal clipboards or some such thing. The mouse
> still moves and gnome panel items still highlight, but nothing is
> useable. I left it set for over an hour, and nothing happened. I have
> a 650 Mhz processor, 128MB RAM and 128 MB swap, so resources are not
> the problem. If I swap out the console before killing X with
> CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE, I see that sawfish is taking up about 80-90% of my
> CPU cycles, but nothing else is out of the ordinary.
> 
> Here's the strange part: I can load mathematica if I use the Gnome
> control center to switch window managers (on the fly) to enlightenment.
> After it's loaded, I can switch back to sawfish and everything works.
> Can somebody tell me what my problem might be? 

Conventional wisdom suggests that one avoid using a pre-release version of
a software package in a day-to-day environment.  According to Sawfish's
own website, the latest release of their window manager is 0.35.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/sawfish/?highlight=sawfish

It's impossible to be certain of what may be the culprit in this
circumstance.  The documentation for the Mathematica front end for X
requires that the window manager be ICCCM compliant:

http://www.tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/

If the window manager does not meet this standard, it is not supported.

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