[PLUG] Korn Shell Profile with Aterm

[Cooper Stevenson]

All;

I just solved a nagging problem with Aterm (basically a transparent xterm)
executed with WindowMaker from an icon.

You see, Aterm seems to ignore some of my ~.kshrc, ~.profile, ~.inputrc
directives. It's failure to set the terminal to vi mode command line
operation using the `set -o vi' directive chief among them. The prompt's
lack of tab filename completion comes in second.

My prompt is fine using a regular (Ctrl-Alt-F*) terminal.

The solution in my case was to insert the following in the ``Application
path and arguments'' field in Aterm's ``Applications path and arguments''
field in the ``Docked application Settings'' dialog box:

  /usr/local/bin/ksh -c "/usr/local/bin/aterm -tr -trsb -tint DarkBlue
-tintingType true -fg cyan -e /usr/local/bin/ksh -o vi -o vi-tabcomplete
&"

The -c switch tells the Korne Shell to ``run the following command.'' The
-tr, trsb, tint, tintingType,and -fg flags are just window dressing
(pardon the pun).

Pay special attention to the `-e ksh -o vi -o vi-complete' directive. See
ksh's man page for details.

Note: The Korne Shell is very feature rich. I daresay the fullest shell
available. Your opinion may vary.

The -e flag is Aterm's flag to ``run the following, '' in this case ksh
with the vi options.

I half expected to have to type `exit' or execute a Ctrl-D twice to
terminate this shell. That was fortunately not the case. That is because
Window maker spawns the command as a child process independent of the
parent.I watched `top' while double-clicking the icon to observe this.

So, the bottom line is that if you are having trouble with terminal
emulators ignoring your shell's initialization profile, this trick may
work for you.


Best,


Cooper