# I need the x11 for dummies instructions



## edX (Feb 12, 2003)

ok, i've tried reading the faq's and i'm still lost. i have 3 apps that i want to get to work - Gimp, OpenOffice, and R-1.5.1. 

we all know i am a complete idiot and paranoid when it comes to anything with command lines so i would like as much GUI interaction as possible. i've installed x11, x11sdk, and the developer tools. i've done a complete instalation of R. what else do i need to do and in what order to get these apps running properly? PLEASE, assume i know nothing (because that's exactly how much i know) and give very explicit directions - what to do first, second, etc..

i already have fink and fink commander sitting on my desktop uninstalled. i have gimp and openoffice uninstalled. 

several of you have poked and prodded at me to do this, now i would really appreciate some help doing it 

TIA


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## edX (Feb 12, 2003)

ok, i managed to find an already packaged version of gimp, installed it and have gotten it to work with what i have in now plus the gtk. gimp is certainly not intuitive but i did figure a little out. certainly a project for later. after digging a bit it appears to be everything i hoped it would be.  is there a manual for it somewhere?

really folks, i'd appreciate some help now while i've got the time to do this. 

maybe if i try it as more questions - should i intall fink and then fink commander at this point? or should i go ahead and install openoffice?


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## Giaguara (Feb 12, 2003)

http://manual.gimp.org/

X11 should be enough for OpenOffice. (Sorry, I need sleep now)


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## dlloyd (Feb 12, 2003)

Assuming that you installed the Gimp from OpenDarwin, you may have problems with Fink, at least this is what the Fink people say.
I just got through helping BitWit to do pretty much what you want to do, so have a look here and more importantly here. In my numerous posts in these two threads, I do the 'X11 for dummies' routine. This is the reason I didn't immediately reply to your post as soon as I saw it, I am 'X11nd' out for now. If these don't answer everything, then please post questions here, and I will answer them to the best of my ability!


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## edX (Feb 12, 2003)

yea, fink won't let me install. it says that i already have an sw folder so i need to update. well, when i followed their instructions for updating, i can't find fink to discover what version i have. (i didn't install any, but R or dev tools might have? ) can i just hide my sw folder and then install and then move the contents back into the new folder with drag and drop? this sure sounds easier to me than their complicated command line stuff that i can't even figure out which one i should use.

and yes, i installed opendarwin gimp before fink since nobody was bothering to answer my question and i was left exploring all this on my own. i did not associate the open darwin version with their warnings about macGimp (a commercial version) or openOSX Gimp. 

i'm with Bitwit - why can't somebody write a complete beginner's guide to this stuff that's all in one place, all in one document and is understandable by a 12 yo?


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## wiz (Feb 12, 2003)

well, you could have installed GIMP through fink, that would have simplified the whole process.

Infact install[ed] eveything though fink. (whatever is available that is)


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## edX (Feb 12, 2003)

that's nice to know now  nowhere have i seen that explained but i have seen it alluded to. so what about it - can i just remove the sw folder and then copy back by hand or even reinstall everything?


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## edX (Feb 13, 2003)

well, i ended up trying the removal of the sw folder and installing. that went fine. i then took and moved the other files back. 6 of them were dupiclates so i left the ones fink installed and held onto them just in case. i tried to get fink to check on my gimp install and it told me i needed a something for gif's, so i said yes and it has been compilining for over a half hour so far. but all seems smooth. fink commander is now working as well and recognizes some stuff - but not R and not gimp. i'm guessing i will have two versions of gimp when i'm done. probably 2 of R as well. fink commander shows a newer version of R (actually calls it r-base). i suppose i will try letting it get it for me and see what happens once gimp is thru.

i can see now why this stuff has never presented any serious challenge to windows or apple. most people would rather pay the money than go thru this


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## dlloyd (Feb 13, 2003)

Okay okay, I'll write an 'X11 for Dummies' How To. Look for it to be up by this evening (at the latest, depending on how well de-constructing our iMac goes).


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## Darkshadow (Feb 13, 2003)

Heh - _some_ people like going through this stuff.  Right now, I'm compiling all the sources for X11, etc myself.  Though I won't be able to run it as an application, I'll have to log out to the console to run it - but I can deal with that.

I also won't have Apple's window manager for it, but that's fine with me.  I was planning to use Gnome & Enlightenment anyway. Heh

By the way, *dlloyd* - X11 _does_ use XFree86.  Err...you posted that in another post, but I can't remember which one now.

Also, it seems that X11 uses the Quartz rendering on its own - not totally sure about this, since I haven't run it yet, but the option was there in the source I downled from XFree86.org.  I'll report back on it- if I'm able to tell at all. 

*edX* - I'll try 'n help with any X11 questions you have as well. I haven't so far because I'm not installing with fink - so I don't know the answers to those questions.  More general ones I will, though.  I've been using X11 for somewhere near 5 years now.


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## btoneill (Feb 13, 2003)

> _Originally posted by edX _
> *well, i ended up trying the removal of the sw folder and installing. that went fine. i then took and moved the other files back. 6 of them were dupiclates so i left the ones fink installed and held onto them just in case. *



Did you by any change install Virex 7.2? Virex 7.2 and fink cannot currently coexist, because, well, Virex folks decided to use fink libraries for some parts of their software, and they used really old versions at that, and ofcourse, they didnt' move their location, so Virex creates /sw and sticks some libraries in there which will break fink stuff, and ofcourse, the fink versions will break Virex, hopefully there will be a fix for that sometime soon.

I attempted to write a simple FAQ for 12yo's but I couldn't quite do it. I guess I've done UNIX way too long to even contemplate not being able to move around on the command line, which I'm finding many people have no clue about. So, I gave up and just focused on a FAQ for people with a little unix experience so I wouldn't insult anyone  I think picking up something like "UNIX for Dummies" might help with alot of the terror of the terminal 

And if it makes any of the old mac people feel better, I had no clue what spring loaded folders were until a few months ago and that people actually had a use for those damn color coded file/folder stuff you could set in OS 9 and below and I still have trouble remembering which symbols are for the "cmd" and "apple" keys on the keyboard (doesn't help that I don't use an apple keyboard) so I keep seeing shortcuts in menus and keep forgetting what that damn swirly looking thing is, ofcourse, I've gotten much better at it lately 

Brian


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## btoneill (Feb 13, 2003)

Oh, there are also several books on the Gimp that are very helpful. The O'Reilly "GIMP Pocket Reference" is a very good one along with "Grokking the GIMP".

Brian


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## edX (Feb 13, 2003)

no, i don't have virex 7.2, just 7.0 the free version for the rest of us. 

i ran terminal to get fink to recognise gimp and that seemed to be working but it identified some other available packages and i said yes. (i loved it - "if you don't know what any of this means, say yes"  ). it then went thru about 3+ hours of compiling. all i know is it was done when i got up this morning. my customized location in xterm launches gimp with no problem. using /sw/bin/gimp launches it as well but with lots of items not found. i also have 68 total packages installed according to commander. 

so now, how do i launch these apps from commander? i assume there is a point and click method here but i can't seem to id it. i think i am going to trash all my self installing stuff from opendarwin and just use fink commander for everything else. and is there a way for it to check for R thru commander? it appears to need updating anyway.


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## edX (Feb 13, 2003)

oh, i guess i should add that when i double click on gimp in commander i get 2 text edit docs of code type stuff open up. one is about info and the other about patch.


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## btoneill (Feb 13, 2003)

> _Originally posted by edX _
> *
> so now, how do i launch these apps from commander? i assume there is a point and click method here but i can't seem to id it. i think i am going to trash all my self installing stuff from opendarwin and just use fink commander for everything else. and is there a way for it to check for R thru commander? it appears to need updating anyway. *



Nope, finkcommander is only for installing the apps, you can't run them from it. You have to run the apps from either the command line or create a link for them in the X11 menu under applictions.

Brian


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## edX (Feb 13, 2003)

ok, so the path for anything installed by fink would be /sw/bin/_app name_  ?


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## btoneill (Feb 13, 2003)

Yup, you're catching on 

Brian


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## edX (Feb 13, 2003)

ok, the next question has probably been asked a thousand times so if it's a long answer, just point me in the right direction.

my HD is quickly filling back up. can i install apps on my external drive? and what kind of path would they need?


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## Darkshadow (Feb 13, 2003)

You should be able to, though you may have to manually move them there if you download them with fink.  And the path would be /Volumes/drive_name/wherever_apps_are.

It should work fine - note that, like I said before, I haven't ever used fink, so if it does any "funny stuff" with the apps, and they have to be in one particular place, that won't work.  It doesn't sound to me like this is the case, though.  They probably only need to be there for fink to know you have them and/or to update them.


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## edX (Feb 13, 2003)

Thanks Darkshadow!!

still wondering if anybody knows about if fink commander will check all files for R or if i need to do that from terminal?


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## lurk (Feb 13, 2003)

I'm not quite sure if I understand the question but if you install R via finkcommander it should grab all of the depenedencys as well. It took a while on my machine since it had to compile GCC again to get Fortran support (go figure)....

-Eric


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## edX (Feb 13, 2003)

well my question, in more generic terms is that if i know something is installed but fink commander doesn't recognise it as such, will it check my HD for it first or will it just go get a new one and then check. or do i need to let fink find it using terminal like i did with x11 and gimp?

at any rate, i'm completely baffled now because i have found an os x native version of R. the one i had previously downloaded had claimed to be wasn't as far as i could tell. in fact, i'm yet to figure out where it went at all. i may also download r-base thru fink and see how it works with the GUI that is in development for it. The native gui is not very intuitive, not that i expected it to be. But i originally downloaded R-1.5.1 from versiontracker and i swear it just disappears after i have run the installer. i'm sure it's eating up space onmy drive somewhere, but who knows where. i've searched with Find, i've made invisible files visible, etc. i'm stumped as to how to launch it.

but now i have r162 from the Cran site. there is also a 1.6.2 in the x11 version. 
R, as it is, really reminds me of running SPSS on DOS many years ago  no doubt that printing out the manual will help a lot.

i think i'm done with questions for now. i'll go play with my new toys on my new systems.

THANKS TO ALL!!


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## edX (Feb 15, 2003)

ok, i'm back. you knew i would be. now i want to know if there is a way to save docs to an external drive. i can't seem to get out of my main drive from the save dialogues. and while i got openoffice running fine from an external drive, i still can't figure out how to save files in its own folder. also my external has a name with spaces in it and terminal won't seem to let me do any commands past the first word. 

any suggestions here?


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## Captain Code (Feb 15, 2003)

I haven't used OpenOffice before, but you can try navigating from your main drive to other drives by going into the /Volumes folder at the root of your main drive.  It should have all the connected hard drives and CD drives in that folder.

You can escape a space in the terminal by using a backslash "\" before every space in the line (ex: /Volumes/Mac\ HD\ 2).  That will tell the terminal to ignore the spaces.  You can also enclose everything in quotes like "/Volumes/Mac HD 2"


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## edX (Feb 15, 2003)

thanks. that works, i see how it's done now. for some reason i didn't realize that the dialogue wasn't starting from root. 

hey, i said 'for dummies' 

now i'm having problems trying to install RGnumeric and RGtk, for adding Gnumeric to R as a GUI interface. the install instructions say run 'R CMD INSTALL RGtk' but i get back a not found with just that. if i add the path to R and then that, i get back 'no packages specified'. obviously i installed R with Fink and these are not available thru Fink - even as unstable. Any ideas?


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## Giaguara (Feb 15, 2003)

Ed, want to try Bluefish?


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## edX (Feb 15, 2003)

uh, sorry Gia, but what would a web oriented text editor do for me?


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## Giaguara (Feb 15, 2003)

.. why what? Don't you ever do anything with html etc? I'm just compiling it - tired of BBedit so now (mmh, I wanted something Wysiwyg as well, not just hand coding) trying that


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## edX (Feb 15, 2003)

i haven't done any html in over a year. i started too and then got my photo sharing pages. not in a big rush and this stuff is already eating my little 10 GB HD alive.

another question i meant to ask - does the use of capital and lowercase letters make a difference? i've been taking extra care to use them as shown, but i hate it.


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## Giaguara (Feb 15, 2003)

Yes. Upper / lower case makes the difference.


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## Durbrow (Feb 17, 2003)

edX: I've been following this thread. Unless I am mistaken your goal is to install X Windows in order to run a GUI version of R. 2 questions:

1. Is THERE a GUI version of R?
2. Was it worth all the previous problems?

Thanks for any info.


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## nickn (Feb 17, 2003)

He installed X to run gimp, openoffice, and R .... read the first post.


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## edX (Feb 17, 2003)

Durbrow - yes, one of my major goals is to run R off of a gui. there are several, only one of which i have been able to make work. however it is very much in it's infancy and accesses only the most simple statistics like t-tests. in other words stuff i could do with gnumeric (now that i have discovered it as well. there is an interface that links R to gnumeric but i can't get it to install and it's not part of fink commander's listings. i would like to know how to get it in place. i would be happy with any interface that lets me enter data in spreadsheet style and gives me manova abilities i think. there are a couple of other stats related to test reliability i will need, but not as soon.


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