Hardcoded 'xterm' about fricas HOT 9 OPEN

Agreed. To hardcode "xterm" is probably a bad idea given that there is not just *nix systems.
However, honestly, I rather think that ")edit" should be removed completely. Nowadays you can access any file with any editor and you can do this while FriCAS is running. There is simply no need anymore to start an editor from within FriCAS. Am I wrong?

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BTW, look into i-syscmd.boot. ")edit" calls editFile from compat.boot

editFile file ==
  MEMQ(INTERN('"WIN32",FIND_-PACKAGE("KEYWORD")),_*FEATURES_*) =>
      OBEY STRCONC('"notepad ", file)
  OBEY STRCONC('"$FRICAS/lib/SPADEDIT ", file)

If you look into the script SPADEDIT, then you find that "xterm" is only used if you haven't set your FRICASEDITOR shell variable.
Unfortunately, I cannot give you a good value for FRICASEDITOR that works when running FriCAS inside WSL2 under Windows. So xterm is not totally hardcoded.
I guess, that it might make sense to change SPADEDIT so that the WSL2 case is nicely covered by default. (I have no clue, how.)

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But, yes, as said by Ralf Hemmecke, on other systems like MinGW/MSYS where X11 (or the like) are not available xterm has no sense.

First, thanks for your response. Le sam. 17 juin 2023 à 01:04, hebisch @.***> a écrit :

Launching 'more' in an 'xterm'. You can specify different
editor by setting FRICASEDITOR environment variable.
Personally I would prefer this message. And, as an opinion, I would preferably use the $EDITOR (and eventually also $VISUAL) well known environment variables.
> So 'xterm' is needed. If I run graphics examples via HyperDoc I also > need 'xterm'. If I install 'xterm', with X started I have graphic > examples produced from HyperDoc of course.
Yes, I know.
More precisely, FriCAS uses extra terminal when it _executes_ example code from HyperDoc: does not mater if graphics or not, what counts is fact that example is executed as opposed to using precomputed result (precomputed results, including graphics work without extra termial). We could make this configurable, but what are reasonable choices? We need ability to pass command line to execute inside the terminal and ability to set window title is desirable. We could easily check is say "FRICAS_TERM" environment variable is set and use it as command line string to which we concatenate command to start in the terminal. But it is not clear if such simple concatenation is convenient for other terminal emulators: it is not convenient for 'xterm', one would have to use shell functions to get desired functionality.
Yes, I think FriCAS is right, 'xterm' in fact is _the_ good choice. My issue comes from a personal mistake. I likely removed some X11 apps like xterm. I checked via 'apt-cache rdepends xterm' and yes, installing xorg on my Debian-like system installs xterm. As needed. I checked other terminal emulator and they do not accept the same arguments so I think it would be a mess to handle other terminals correctly. So, it's my fault.
[…](#)
> So I would first suggest to add 'xterm' in prerequisites in the > INSTALL file with X libraries. In past 35 years 'xterm' was considerd standard (mandatory) part of X11. This was exactly due to use cases like our: program needs a terminal emulator and wants to use one already installed in the system. System may have many different terminal emulators but 'xterm' was the only one warranted to exist. In INSTALL we probably should say that user needs _standard_ X windows including 'xterm'. -- Waldek Hebisch — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <[#119 (comment)](https://github.com/fricas/fricas/issues/119#issuecomment-1595425914)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AKGLAMBJDKJW27SI6FI27P3XLTRATANCNFSM6AAAAAAVK7TKAE> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

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