From: alsaggaf@athena.mit.edu (M. Saggaf)
Subject: Re: Seyon 1.7
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
	<1993Jan7.101328.245@nwnexus.WA.COM>
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 18:32:38 GMT

>>>>> On Thu, 7 Jan 1993 10:13:28 GMT, danubius@halcyon.com (Joseph R. Pannon) said:

JRP> However, you have to realize that many of us are in a different
JRP> league here in the Unix front; for many of us Linux is a tool for
JRP> learning Unix.  That means that some of us, myself included, are
JRP> not very knowledgeable about the tar utility, either.  In fact,

That's Ok, I'm learning too. I didn't mean my previous post to seem
unfriendly, I'm basically "a nice guy", but I do get disappointed when
I feel that the documantation that I wroked hard on making as complete
and up-to-date as I can is ignored, not that you did, mind you, but
that's the general impression I get from other people's posts and
email messages.

JRP> for some reason the tar man page is also useless in my set up
JRP> (SLS 0.99), as when I invoke it, I get a text that starts like
JRP> this:

That seems to be a texinfo file, not a nroff man page.

JRP> When I glanced into the tar man page of an HP-UX work station,
JRP> the explanation of it was enough to give me a vertigo.  So what I
JRP> did, I used the sysinstall -install <pkg.taz> method, the same
JRP> that SLS employs.  I figured if that could create the right
JRP> directories, this should do it, too.  Besides, sysinstall makes a
JRP> nice record of installed software which can be used to neatly
JRP> uninstall it later.  What's wrong with that?  Anyway, no matter
JRP> what my working directory was, sysinstall kept installing seyon
JRP> in the same /seyon directory.  I have eventually managed to place
JRP> it in another place by telling sysinstall that my root was
JRP> somewhere else in the directory tree and that worked (after I
JRP> created there that install/installed dir branch, too.)

Nothing I can do about that, Peter McDonalds might be able to help you
though, I don't use SLS myself.

JRP> Unfortunately, the only usable document to read BEFORE install
JRP> was that 1-INSTALL file (and also the most logical to me).
JRP> Anyway, I did follow the other install steps and everything
JRP> seemed to go all right, though I wondered about some of the
JRP> directories where the 'make install' moved things.

This is a problem with SLS, its imake config template has the wrong
definition for LIBDIR. You and others have been bitten by that, and
it's not specific to Seyon -- any X application that you install
yourself is going to have its app-defaults and help files placed in
the wrong directory. I posted about that in the past, and I'm going to
send a letter to Peter about it, but there is really nothing more I
can do about it. Unfortunately, about 90% of the problems linux users
face with Seyon is caused by this (since the server won't load the
app-defaults file if it's in the wrong place); after all, SLS is quite
popular. The long term fix for that is that Peter is hopefully going
to fix the template in the next release (Peter, are you there?), the
short-term fix is to install Seyon by hand if you have SLS. The
install has to go like this:

install -c -s  seyon-cmd /usr/X386/bin
install -c -s  seyon /usr/X386/bin
install -c -m 0444 Seyon.ad /usr/X386/lib/X11/app-defaults/Seyon
install -c -m 0444 Seyon-co.ad /usr/X386/lib/X11/app-defaults/Seyon-color

The help file has to be installed by make install, since the
definiftion of LIBDIR would be hard-coded at compile-time according to
the imake template.

JRP> After the last step, I invoked startx and wanted to see if I
JRP> could get the newly installed seyon man page through the popup
JRP> menu.  Well, it was listed there among the User Commands, but
JRP> when I called it up, all I got was an empty page.  No text in the
JRP> help page window!

You don't see the man page there, what's supposed to have been
displayed there is the help file, which also contains the FAQ. That you
don't see anything is indicative of a mis-installed help file.

JRP> When I typed in the 'seyon' command in the xterm window, I got a
JRP> warning as this:

>> Warning: could not execute 'seyon-emu' 
>> Warning: falling to 'xterm'

Make a link from your favorite terminal-emulator to seyon-emu. Seyon
will try first to execute seyon-emu, and will fall back to xterm if it
doesn't find seyon-emu. This gives more flexibility is choosing the
terminal emulator: color xterm, xvt, shell-tool, Emu, mterm, ...etc.

JRP> In the window assigned to seyon, I got this:

>> Error: no modem device is specified
>> Error: modem init. routine failed
>> Notice: no use continuing, press a key ...
>
JRP> So it was obvious that I was supposed to have set up some modem
JRP> params for seyon, but not having any man page or other plain
JRP> ASCII document I could read even before installing seyon, I could
JRP> not figure it out where and how to set up those params.  Maybe in
JRP> the Seyon resource file in app-defaults?  I haven't checked there
JRP> yet.  Something like this could also be in the .Xdefaults file,
JRP> but I could not find that file anywhere so far.  Beats me.  So,
JRP> maybe you could help me out with this.  If I was able to set up
JRP> my linux for HD boot and figure out all those video params for my
JRP> Xconfig file, I should be able to tackle this
JRP> problem, too.  But I need some direction which way to go.

>Hmmm, I think a manual of 700+ lines (formatted) and a FAQ of 750+
>lines is rather on the ample side. There is not much I can do though
>if people choose not to read them.

JRP> People will choose to read it if it's accessible and logically
JRP> placed, something like the README or README.1ST files in most DOS
JRP> packages.  The problem with your docs is that they are accessible
JRP> only AFTER seyon is installed, in the form of a man page.  In my
JRP> case even that didn't work.  That's pretty frustrating, because
JRP> everybody who mmanaged to get it going is praising Seyon.  So,
JRP> let me do the same, will you?

As a matter of fact, there is a README file (1-README), and from it I
quote:

----------
IMPORTANT:

    Add the resource 'Seyon.modem: /dev/ttys0' to your Xdefaults file
    (substitute your modem device for /dev/ttys0) or invoke seyon by
    the switch '-modem /dev/ttys0'. You have to specify the full path
    name of the device in all cases.
----------

This explains how the modem device is to be specified for Seyon. There
is also a FAQ, and both the README file and the FAQ are plain-ascii
text files that can be read before even compiling Seyon.

JRP> Thanks,
JRP> Joe Pannon

You're welcome. I hope the above helps. In a few hours I'm going to
put a binary distribution of Seyon, along with an installation script,
on sunsite. It's not going to always be the most recent version as the
source distribution, but it's going to be beginners' best bet. So wait
a few hours, calm down, grab a Pepsi or something, and try it out. One
of my goals in distributing the source instead of binaries was that
it's to be a learning tool both to Unix system administration
(cmpiling, installation, ..etc) and to X programming, and I've always
encouraged people to take a look at the source to gain an insight into
writing X programs. Well, turns out it a learning tool alright, but
more than my nerves can take.

Cheers,

/Muhammad M. Saggaf                 | Stop the genocide
 alsaggaf@athena.mit.edu            | Save Bosnia


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