AS without XPMs

Sarwat Khan (sarwat@interlog.com)
Thu, 12 Aug 1999 06:45:40 -0400 

Ugh,

After too many hours, I got AfterStep 1.7.something installed on Mac 
OS X Server (that's 10 Server, not X11 server) running on top of maX 
(which used to be called Xnext). For those who don't know MOSXS is 
the latest incarnation of OpenStep on Mach.

Because I hate XPMs (too fat), I didn't link with it. I didn't have 
XPM support on the system already, so I didn't bother to download & 
build it. I knew that was going to get me into trouble, but I decided 
to go ahead anyway.

So, I'd like to convert all the .xpms to PNG files. I'll handle that 
on my own, but what about AfterStep? How much do I need to change? 
Would it be good enough to just use awk on the look/ files and 
replace .xpm with .png?

As a side note, installing AS on MOSXS was a royal pain in the butt 
(I really had nothing better to do, and I was wondering what it would 
take to get it done). It's not AS's fault. I guess the biggest 
problem I had was because MOSXS uses Frameworks for a lot of stuff, 
not your standard .o or .a libraries. So I didn't have to use -ljpeg, 
I had to use -framework OmniJPEG. Also, maX doesn't put the X11 stuff 
in the usual places, it puts them in 
/Local/Library/Xnext/XR6.4/[usr,bin,X11,whatever]. I was able to get 
around that ok using configure, but then instead of using -lX11, I 
had to use "-F/L/L/Xnext/blah -framework X11", since he's made a 
bunch of libraries frameworks instead (which is ok, but getting AS's 
stuff to work with it was a pain in the ass). Also, he didn't include 
the X11 headers (?!), so I had to collect them from several places 
(what I downloaded from ftp.x.org was incomplete) and merge them in 
order to get all the headers.

A few sources included 'malloc.h'. That's not kept in /usr/include 
(or wherever), it's in 
/System/Library/Frameworks/System.framework/bsd/src/). Yay. Usually 
you use ProjectBuilder to build tools and it handles the dumb details 
for you.

It would be cool if this kind of thing were taken into consideration. 
I needed to change a ton of makefiles; it would have been cool if 
there was an easy way to get configure to make the proper ones for me 
(I couldn't see one). I just had to throw out some stuff (-lm, 
-ljpeg, -lpng, etc) and add different stuff (-framework OmniPNG).

maX is still in development, and it's kinda buggy. I've just 
installed the thing so that I can dabble in X programming once in a 
while. Since I've got MOSXS I really don't need X apps (and I doubt 
I'll try installing any more).

............................................................
Sarwat Khan                             Mississauga, Ontario

sarwat@interlog.com          http://www.interlog.com/~sarwat

             PGP and text/enriched mail welcome.

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