X11 and Terminal.app in OS X

[htmlmasterdave]

How would I be able to do this? So whenever X11 is running I'm still able to use the Terminal.app program for X forwarding instead of having to use xterm.

Thanks!

Dave

 

[Ecgtheow]

What are you trying to do exactly, run X11 apps in the Terminal or launch them from it?

 

[htmlmasterdave]

Just launch then from the Terminal...like I'd like to be able to launch emacs from there and get the X11 version to come up, or to be able to ssh to a server with the X11 forwarding enabled and get back the windows when I run stuff from there.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I think you'll need to use an xterm. xterms aren't much different.

 

[Ecgtheow]

You can use "open-x11" (sans quotes) to do that. So if you wanted to launch emacs in X11, you'd type

open-x11 emacs

I have very little experience with ssh, so I'm not sure about the other stuff, but it's a start.

 

[htmlmasterdave]

Is it just that Terminal is unaware that X11 is running? Could it be something like a configuration file that needs editing telling it to look at localhost or something for X? Thanks for the open-x11 tip 🙂

 

[Ecgtheow]

Originally posted by: htmlmasterdave
Is it just that Terminal is unaware that X11 is running? Could it be something like a configuration file that needs editing telling it to look at localhost or something for X?

Sort of. You have to set the DISPLAY variable in Terminal to get it to work with X11 so something like

export DISPLAY=0.0

would get it to work. But that could conceivably cause problems in certain situations (from what I've read; my own unix-fu isn't that good enough to fully grasp it yet).

 

[htmlmasterdave]

Setting it to DISPLAY=:0.0 seems to work flawlessly so far.. thanks!

 

[n0cmonkey]

Wow, I didn't know Terminal.app was X aware... Nice, thanks for the info!

Setting the DISPLAY shouldn't have any bad effects, its normal for *nix systems.