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  • Looking for alternative to 'xmessage'

    From Kenny McCormack@21:1/5 to All on Sat Oct 21 08:21:14 2017
    In a shell script, I have a need to put up a 'pause' - wait for the user to click something, before proceeding. I can do:

    $ xmessage "Click this window to continue..."

    which works, but has two problems:

    1) Both the window and the text are tiny. There are no options in xmessage
    to change this. I would like the window to be big and easily
    readable/visible on the desktop.

    2) Being based on old Athena widgets, it is ugly.

    I'm looking for an easy alternative. On Linux, there is zenity, which
    would work, but, alas, zenity isn't available on the platform in question.
    I've downloaded the zenity source and tried to compile it, but the
    ./configure step failed with an error message about something called 'pkg_configure'. I've never heard of pkg_configure before. In any case,
    it didn't look like an easy compile, so I abandoned it. If there is an
    easy way to get zenity to compile (w/o pkg_configure), please advise.

    Note that I have the C compiler and can compile (simple) X programs. So,
    if there are any other alternatives to xmessage, please let me know as
    well.

    Also, see next thread - about 'xquit'.

    --
    A racist, a Nazi, and a Klansman walk into a bar...

    Bartender says, "What will it be, Mr. Trump?"

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  • From Lew Pitcher@21:1/5 to Kenny McCormack on Sat Oct 21 10:14:03 2017
    Kenny McCormack wrote:

    In a shell script, I have a need to put up a 'pause' - wait for the user
    to
    click something, before proceeding. I can do:

    $ xmessage "Click this window to continue..."

    which works, but has two problems:

    1) Both the window and the text are tiny. There are no options in
    xmessage
    to change this. I would like the window to be big and easily readable/visible on the desktop.

    2) Being based on old Athena widgets, it is ugly.

    I cant solve the "it is ugly" for you, but the window/font size issue is fixable.

    You simply use the -fn option to adjust the fontname so that it uses a
    bigger font.

    Example:
    xmessage -fn 5x7 "This is small print..."
    vs
    xmessage -fn 10x20 "This is big print..."
    vs
    xmessage -fn '-*-*-*-*-*-*-34-*-*-*-*-*-*-*' "This is huge, fancy print"


    For more info on font names, read "FONT NAMES" section of the X(7) manpage ("man 7 X"). To see (and select) font name, you can run xfontsel(1).



    [snip]

    HTH
    --
    Lew Pitcher
    "In Skills, We Trust"
    PGP public key available upon request

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  • From Julian Bradfield@21:1/5 to Kenny McCormack on Sat Oct 21 14:09:03 2017
    On 2017-10-21, Kenny McCormack <[email protected]> wrote:
    $ xmessage "Click this window to continue..."

    which works, but has two problems:

    1) Both the window and the text are tiny. There are no options in xmessage to change this. I would like the window to be big and easily readable/visible on the desktop.

    xmessage -xrm 'xmessages*font: lucidasanstypewriter-24' foo

    works for me.

    2) Being based on old Athena widgets, it is ugly.

    can't fix that :)

    If you want it to look pretty, best thing is to find a toolkit that
    matches your notion of pretty, and write it in that.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Kenny McCormack@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Sat Oct 21 14:59:55 2017
    In article <[email protected]>,
    Julian Bradfield <[email protected]> wrote:
    On 2017-10-21, Kenny McCormack <[email protected]> wrote:
    $ xmessage "Click this window to continue..."

    which works, but has two problems:

    1) Both the window and the text are tiny. There are no options in xmessage >> to change this. I would like the window to be big and easily
    readable/visible on the desktop.

    xmessage -xrm 'xmessages*font: lucidasanstypewriter-24' foo

    works for me.

    Didn't work for me. I.e., no change in the window appearance.

    However, this, suggested by the next poster, did work:

    $ xmessage -fn '-*-*-*-*-*-*-34-*-*-*-*-*-*-*' "This is huge, fancy print"

    This is nice, but it'd be even better if it was bigger still. What would
    be the magic incantation for that?

    2) Being based on old Athena widgets, it is ugly.

    can't fix that :)

    If you want it to look pretty, best thing is to find a toolkit that
    matches your notion of pretty, and write it in that.

    That's why I turn to the wisdom of the ancients. To suggest alternatives.

    As I mentioned in the OP, zenity comes close to what I want - it has a
    nice, soft, modern look to it - but it is not available on the platform on which I need it (and, as mentioned in the OP, I was not able to
    compile/build it from source).

    --
    The randomly chosen signature file that would have appeared here is more than 4 lines long. As such, it violates one or more Usenet RFCs. In order to remain in compliance with said RFCs, the actual sig can be found at the following URL:
    http://user.xmission.com/~gazelle/Sigs/ThePublicGood

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  • From Julian Bradfield@21:1/5 to Kenny McCormack on Sat Oct 21 15:22:41 2017
    On 2017-10-21, Kenny McCormack <[email protected]> wrote:
    I'm looking for an easy alternative. On Linux, there is zenity, which
    would work, but, alas, zenity isn't available on the platform in question. I've downloaded the zenity source and tried to compile it, but the ./configure step failed with an error message about something called 'pkg_configure'. I've never heard of pkg_configure before. In any case,
    it didn't look like an easy compile, so I abandoned it. If there is an
    easy way to get zenity to compile (w/o pkg_configure), please advise.

    All modern software puts you in dependency hell if you try to compile
    from source.

    What is the platform? gtk+2 works reasonably on most platforms with a
    modest number of dependencies.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Julian Bradfield@21:1/5 to Lew Pitcher on Sat Oct 21 15:19:07 2017
    On 2017-10-21, Lew Pitcher <[email protected]> wrote:
    xmessage -fn 5x7 "This is small print..."

    How embarrassing, I'd forgotten that -fn was a standard toolkit
    argument!

    As well as xfontsel, you can use xlsfonts to list all fonts on the
    system.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Eli the Bearded@21:1/5 to Kenny McCormack on Sun Oct 22 04:35:48 2017
    In comp.windows.x, Kenny McCormack <[email protected]> wrote:
    In a shell script, I have a need to put up a 'pause' - wait for the user to click something, before proceeding. I can do:

    $ xmessage "Click this window to continue..."

    A) xterm -e whiptail --msgbox "X11? Okay" 10 40 \
    --ok-button "hit enter"

    B) Use Tcl to build your own fancier one.

    C) Create an image with the message, use an image viewer to display
    it. I like feh, but that might be a trick to compile off Linux.
    gifsicle's `gifview` is easy to build.

    Elijah
    ------
    option C doesn't allow for much more than pause

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  • From Kenny McCormack@21:1/5 to *@eli.users.panix.com on Sun Oct 22 06:21:37 2017
    In article <eli$[email protected]>,
    Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:
    In comp.windows.x, Kenny McCormack <[email protected]> wrote:
    In a shell script, I have a need to put up a 'pause' - wait for the user to >> click something, before proceeding. I can do:

    $ xmessage "Click this window to continue..."

    A) xterm -e whiptail --msgbox "X11? Okay" 10 40 \
    --ok-button "hit enter"

    OK, I get it, but I'll pass on this one...

    B) Use Tcl to build your own fancier one.

    This is a good idea. I've actually done Tk stuff like this already, so I
    know the drill. I knew there had to be a simple one out there.

    C) Create an image with the message, use an image viewer to display
    it. I like feh, but that might be a trick to compile off Linux.
    gifsicle's `gifview` is easy to build.

    Yes, I've used 'feh' as well. Another good suggestion.
    Although, as noted, one is likely to run into the same problem of it not
    being available or easy to compile on the non-Linux platform.

    Anyway, as indicated in the other thread, I've solved this by adapting my 'xquit' program from long ago.

    --
    Shikata ga nai...

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