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Re: Xy4-Dosemu startup and quit tweaks

Raphael Tennenbaum wrote:

just guessing -- but the feeling I had is that Alt-F4 closes the
selected application, then the focus rapidly switches to the previous
one, while Alt-F4 is still being pressed, thus shutting that one down
as well. as I say, a guess, but it seemed as though it would explain
why Alt-F4 closes two windows, and I *think* it's happened with other
apps. (I must say, though -- Alt-F4 closes my dosemu whether it's
running Xy or not.)



right, alt-f4 will close the first or top open window, including Xy or
Dosemu without Xy, as long as alt-f4 is the "close window" key combo in
Gnome (when I change this via Keyboard Shortcuts to Mod4+F4, that's not
the case -- Alt-F4 will close Xy4-- as long as Alt-F4 quits Xy in Xy's
kbd file-- but it won't close Dosemu alone).


If alt-f4 is Gnome's "close window" key combo, and I convert Alt-F4 to
null in my Xy4 keyboard file, what happens is that if Xy is the *second*
window (ie, in an open window just below the program window I'm working
in), Xy doesn't close if I use alt-f4 to close the other program. That
said, in Xy and Dosemu, Gnome's "close window" key combo, no matter what
it's set to, will always close Xy as long as it's the uppermost/first
open window on the desktop, and closing via Gnome results in an
immediate end to Xy as far as I can tell; no procedures or programs
associated with quitting Xy will be run, and any unsaved changes to
files will be lost. It's like pulling the plug on a computer.


If Gnome and Xy share the same key combo for "close window" and "quit",
respectively, there is a difference in how two superimposed Xy windows
will react. If you have two Xy/Dosemu programs, one open on top of the
other on the desktop, both with an open file with unsaved edits, when
you hit Alt-F4, the first Xy will quit on Gnome's terms -- an immediate
shutdown. The second quits on Xy's terms, and will ask if you want to
save yr changes; you can cancel and keep Xy open.


pl



it's one big reason for two desktops, the other being I need to get
away from three browser windows each with 8-9 tabs open, Thunderbird,
jPilot, and then a couple of Nautilus & gedit windows, maybe a
terminal...


I've experienced a number of peculiarities with the Xy keyboard under
dosemu, but since my .kbd file has got vestiges from stuff two decades
old, am loath to point any fingers. I believe Dosemu makes a few
assignments that are non-standard: I filed a bug report about
Alt-Backspace, since I was so used to erasing the previous word with
it, and occasionally while running idkey.pm something unexpected will
show up -- often with dual-shifted keys. but again, my keyboard file
is a mess. also, there are apparently some dosemu experts who can
remap/recompile the keyboard, but I never figured out how.


thanks for the pointer to those utilities. Partimage seems to remind
me when I don't invoke it with sudo. (sometimes Linux feels like a
very pedantic game of "Simon Says.") I really don't know why it
accused me of having mounted that partition, unless perhaps the
thumbdrive's fstab is somehow to blame, but since I backed up
successfully, I'm not going to lose any sleep.


-rafe


Paul Lagasse wrote:

Hi Rafe -- I wondered if that was why XyWrite got its own desktop. My
guess is that if you change yr XyWrite Alt+F4 keyboard line to null,
Xy will stop closing if you close the window above. In one of my
attempts to fix Alt+Tab, before I switched to Super+Tab, I removed
the Tab character from the Tab key in the Alt section of the Xy4
keyboard file, and that did the trick.


I don't think it's Ubuntu that's hypersensitive to the keyboard.
Ubuntu's programs seem well-behaved, and I've never seen one respond
to keystrokes entered in another program. It seems to be related to
dosemu, but only when it's running another program. I've tested out
Alt+F4 and Ctrl+c on dosemu, and when it's at a dos prompt or not
running Xy4, it never closed; it's only when it's running XyWrite (or
starting keystop) that my problems appear.


I don't think I've had partimage complain that an unmounted partition
was mounted; as best I can recall, that aspect has run smoothly. (I
often run it off an unpowered usb hard drive that has a persistent
Ubuntu install, which should be a similar situation to your
thumbdrive.) I usually do stupid stuff like forgetting to run sudo,
or not entering the path in addition to the filename of the image
file I'm creating. BTW, if you've got a persistent Jaunty thumbdrive
now, you can turn it into even more of a rescue drive (should you
ever need that, and if you haven't already) by going to Ubuntu Rescue
Remix and running the apt-get install command at the bottom of page
http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/Software. I believe that convertfs
doesn't install, but all the other tools do; you might need to remove
that from the command to get it to run smoothly.


I looked at Mendelson's WPDOS/Linux site a couple years ago, and at
the time I think I too made the suggested hogthreshold change, but I
reverted back when I didn't notice any difference. (And like you, I
don't think that fiddling with the CPU setting makes any difference
in how Xy runs; I have it set to 486 currently). I see the site's
been thoroughly updated and expanded since then, and has many more
suggestions that would have been helpful when I was running 7.04 and
7.10. I'll sit down and read through it again; thanks.


Paul