xdosemu & the _X_... variables in dosemu.conf

[Hartmut Figge <hfigge@uni.de>]

Greetings,

the following problem can eventually be solved by the developers of
dosemu or perhaps be circumvented by others. I have Cc'ed the dosemu
maintainer of my distro. Possible followups should go to linux-msdos.

The problem:
the variables in dosemu.conf beginning with _X_ will not be evaluated,
if xdosemu is started from the menu of an windowmanger _and_ X was
started with 'startx' from the console.

Proof:
in dosemu.conf set _X_title = "strange". If not present, add a menu-item
to your windowmanger to start xdosemu. Start X with startx, _not_ with
xdm or similar.
If you now start xdosemu from an xterm, you will see the title 'strange'
at the top of the xdosemu window as expected, but if you start xdosemu
from the menu you will not.

Reason:
in $DOSEMU_LIB_DIR/global.conf are the lines

if ($DOSEMU_STDIN_IS_CONSOLE eq "1")
  $BEING_ON = "console"
else

and DOSEMU_STDIN_IS_CONSOLE was set by evaluating the output of 'who am
i', which contains the terminal. And this terminal will be tty?, if you
have started X by 'startx', unless you start xdosemu from an xterm.
$BEING_ON = "console" will bypass the evaluating of the _X_... variables
in dosemu.conf.


For me, i have a very ugly workaround. I have inserted the lines

if ($SURELY_X)
  $DOSEMU_STDIN_IS_CONSOLE=(0)
endif

just before the earlier mentioned lines, start xdosemu from the menu of
the windowmanager with the command 'xdosemu.fake', where 'xdosemu.fake'
is a shell-script with the lines

#!/bin/sh
export SURELY_X=1
xdosemu
unset SURELY_X

cu
-- 
hafi