From: arlindo AT niteroi DOT gsfc DOT nasa DOT gov (Arlindo da Silva) Subject: Re: X11R6.3 binaries 13 Nov 1997 21:33:04 -0800 Message-ID: <199711140441.XAA13508.cygnus.gnu-win32@woodmore.gsfc.nasa.gov> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: garbanzo AT hooked DOT net (Alex) Cc: vischne AT ibm DOT net, gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Alex, > > > All this talk about X11R6.3. I think it's really impressive, but there is > > one loose thread: In Linux and other Unix flavors, you have a local > > loopback so that the X-server doesn't have to use the network to start up. > > It would make an enormous difference on useability of the X libraries if > > some localhost hack were built into the system. > > Perhaps I missed something, but doesn't 127.0.0.1 work as a loopback > device (it seems to for me, but I haven't tried X)? > Yes, it does; you can also get the same effect by setting DISPLAY=localhost:0.0. The problem is, not every X server will work smoothly if you don't have an active network connection. For example, X-Win32 from Starnet will take forever to start if you have a dial-up network with DNS enabled, when your PPP connection is not up. I run into similar problems with other pricy X servers; you can generally get things to work with localhost but you usually need to tinker with obscure settings. The MI/X may be flaky on other accounts (it cannot properly handle the Athena Widgets), but at least it works fine with local clients using vanilla xlib calls. Wouldn't it be lovely to have the sources for a working win32 X server? -- Arlindo da Silva dasilva AT alum DOT mit DOT edu - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".