[KDE/Mac] Help with installation on Xquartz via Fink

[René J.V. Bertin]

Le Monday September 15 2014, 05:59:02 Anne & Larry Brunelle a écrit :

> Looks to me to be a number of packages named qt4-base-mac-<something>
> all with a version number 4.8.6-2 (which may be a Fink package version,
> not sure), and theoretically including backward compatibility for Qt 3.
> Not sure how much this tells you.

It tells me that it's highly unlikely that you got an X11 Qt4 there. Do you have any pure Qt apps installed, maybe Assistant or Designer? What do you get when you launch these - a standard Mac app with the menubar at the top of the screen? If so, you have what MacPorts calls Qt4-mac .

> That's merely "konsole".  You get the same when you invoke it

So you have the Cocoa (or Aqua, if you prefer) instead of the X11 Qt.

> from an xterm in a root window - kicks you out of the root
> window to give focus to konsole, but does not kill the (nearly
> featureless twm) root window.

Why would it kill the root window? X11 on OS X is not very different from CygwinX. It can run either rootless (basically overlaying a fullscreen window on your screen), or it can run rooted, with X11 windows behaving as if they were standalone windows of the X11 application. If you run QuartzWM, they'll even look almost identical to standard OS X windows.


> fond of Windows, which Cygwin sorta-kinda overcomes.  Back in the 10.2-10.4 days,

I wouldn't be surprised if that corresponds to a  time Qt could still be built on OS X as if the OS were just "another Unix box".
That no longer works.

> What's most important to me:
> o A more-or-less "standard", yet full-featured X11 environment

X11 is full-featured on OS X, or closely enough so. But I'm guessing you're referring to addons built atop of X11 ...

> o Multiple desktops to organize work

OS X has "Spaces"

> o Xemacs

I'm sure you'll find Xemacs works, and also that there are very likely native emacs versions. I know they exist for Vi(m) O:-)

> o konsole, which I find more useful than most xterm solutions

konsole works fine as Cocoa app, except for its different Copy/Paste shortcuts. I find it has little extra to offer over Terminal.app or iTerm.app, though.

> o Of lesser importance, but still useful, are the various "little" KDE apps.
> o For common office work, Firefox, OpenOffice/LibreOffice, GIMP, Inkscape -

Firefox and OpenOffice exist in native versions, there really is no reason to run these under X11 on OS X. That would really limit your experience, esp. w.r.t. hardware acceleration in the browser (as well as Flash support, I presume).

>   none of these need be fussy about underlying platform, but it'd be nice
>   if I didn't have to flip in and out of X11/had good cut'n'paste between.

When you run XQuartz in rooted mode, those applications will have their windows among your other windows, not "on a different screen". And copy/paste actually works pretty good between X11 apps and native apps. 

> Cygwin/KDE 3, which addresses the targets through a VPN.  I have the opportunity
> to switch to a Mac, which no doubt also will contain a VM running a Mac image.

A Mac running OS X in a VM? That's one approach I hadn't thought of ... install Linux, and then run OS X in a VM (VMWare or Parallels have full support for OS X; VirtualBox doesn't have the guest extensions so the UE isn't quite good.

> Macs at home, hence my inquiries.  The Mac would be predictably more reliable
> and require less in the way of updates than the Windows box, and I hoped the

Except for a major OS update about once a year ... up to you which you prefer ...!

R