[vox-tech] using windows pathnames in cygwin

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 05:07:33PM -0500, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> On Tue 31 Jan 06,  2:02 PM, Micah J. Cowan <micah at cowan.name> said:
> > On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 04:43:21PM -0500, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> > > i've never really used cygwin before.  how exactly is X supposed to work?
> > > 
> > > i've run 'startx' just because i didn't know what else to do.  got something
> > > that looked like an xterm and was able to run cygwin's gvim from that.  but
> > > it seems ... very unsatisfying.
> > 
> > What specifically was unsatisfying?
>  
> To start an X environment, I need to launch a DOS shell running bash.  That
> gets me an xtermish thing.

Ooh, ooh. Yeah, that's not cool.

I've got a shortcut on my desktop that launches X with an xterm. I'm
pretty sure I found it in either $CYGROOT/usr/bin or
$CYGROOT/usr/X11R6/bin. I'll let you know what it is when I get home,
unless you find it first.

> And from that xterm, I run things like gvim or a browser.  I'd like to right
> click and choose apps like I do in Enlightenment.  Or use a full GUI env
> like in KDE.
> 
> As it seems, "startx" gives me an xterm from which to launch X apps.  It's
> OK, but I'd like to be able to forget I'm using MS Windows.

Ah. See, I almost never click and choose apps, except the quick-launch
ones directly on my task-bar. So I can't help much here.

However, it may interest you to know that the fact that xterm and other
clients pop up alongside the other Windows apps is a relatively recent
/feature/ (root-less X). You can disable it in your XF86Config, I
believe.

Getting at least a decent window manager should be more than possible.
It might take a little work, though. In the days before I was using the
root-less version of X, I was just making do with twm(!), so I don't
remember dealing with this. Still, odds are you can get a decent wm to
compile under cygwin.

A full GUI might be more tricky, but even without a full KDE session,
you might be able to get certain components running. I'm pretty sure the
Gnome taskbar runs under enlightenment without an actual gnome-session
running; and I'll bet Nautilus is the same way.

But, yeah, we're starting to get into territory where, unfortunately,
"experimentation" may be required. :-(

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
micah at cowan.name