X11R4 server under ESIX

[Jim Christian]

I pulled Athula Herath's compilation of  Thomas Roell's  server from
the ESIX ftp directory on tek4310.kent.edu  (131.123.2.10).  Realizing
that it was compiled under Interactive 2.0.2, I tried to run  it under
ESIX anyway (we're all System V COFF, right??? :-) ).
I noticed a number of things:

	* It wouldn't respond to the keyboard.  Perhaps a difference
          in the keyboard drivers of Interactive and ESIX?  Or am
          I doing something wrong?

	* It seems very fast for things like resizing and moving windows, 
 	  and general bit-blitting, at least compared to the ESIX server.
          My .twmrc file was set up so I could run some programs without
          the keyboard,  and the  two or  three keyboardless clients I
          tried seemed to work fine.  

	* I had to look in the server patch code to realize that the mouse
          port is user-selectable instead of hard-wired to port com1.  
          This (and other command line args) probably ought to be documented
          in a more user-oriented place like a the README file.
          I used a Logitech serial mouse, and it worked fine.

	* When the server exits, the screen is frozen completely black.
          I can issue commands at the keyboard, but I can't see what 
 	  I'm typing.  The only way to reset it seems to be to reboot.
          (I have a simple program which tries to init the screen in
          43 line mode and which often works when the screen has been
          wedged by other programs; but it doesn't seem to work in this
          case.)

	* I had to edit the first line in the 
          /usr/lib/fonts/misc/fonts.alias file to read
		fixed	6x13
	  Otherwise, the server complains about not being able to find the
          fixed font, and it dies.  
	
	* All three fonts directories should be present (100dpi, 75dpi, and
          misc), or the server complains about not being able to set the
          default font path, and it dies.

	* Typing Control-C on the keyboard killed the server (and froze
          the screen as above).  Probably related to the first problem;
          the Control-C is probably getting converted to a SIGINT by the
          ESIX driver, instead of being caught by the server first.


If someone out  there  is willing to port  the server to ESIX   (or if
someone can  point   out what I'm   doing wrong  to  cause  the  above
problems), I  would be most happy  (I'm a  bit short  on time and disk
space to do a port myself.)  For some reason which ESIX support people
haven't been able  to  determine, my ESIX X11R3  server dies at random
times on  my system (anywhere from  30 seconds  to an hour; they claim
I'm the  only  one  on the planet   who's ever  complained  about this
problem), so I'm   hoping to obtain   a more stable   server.  I think
Thomas' port  might do the  trick   (it ran quite  a while  last night
without faltering), if   it would only   recognize the keyboard  under
ESIX.

I'm looking forward to Thomas' promised all-new VGA server.  From what
I've seen of his current port, he's done a  fine job  with IBM's code.
I hope the new server will quickly  find its  way to  ESIX and other
non-Interactive machines once it becomes available.

					Thanks,
					Jim Christian