One of the confusing aspects of using Xwindows is understanding where the programs are located and how they are started. Whether you use Hummingbird Exceed or Reflection/X or any other Xwindow emulator, the programs that you run are 'stolen' from the remote host. This can be confusing since the program looks like it is running on the PC but it is really running on the remote server and you are just viewing the results on your PC.
There are 3 terminal emulators for Xwindows on HP-UX: dtterm, xterm and hpterm. When you telnet to the remote host (or use an automated login method setup by Hummingbird or Reflection/X) you start one of these programs. But unlike a many good terminal emulators, resizing the window (using the sizing handles on the window itself) changes the data space, that is, rows and columns but the font stays the same size. So the window can get longer and wider but the font stays the same and is typically too small. The way to change this is to specify a new set of font values buthe specifications are painfully complex. For example, you might want to start xterm with with a font specified by: -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-m-60-iso8859-1
which is a normal Xwindow specification. You can also specify the font to use in a file you create called: $HOME/.Xdefaults. There are font shortcuts or aliases but these get complicated because both the server and the client must agree on the names. The xterm program simplifies this a bit with CTRL plus left or center button on the mouse. The man page for xterm gives more details. hpterm lacks these special menus, but like all Xwindow programs, there are several hundred options controlling color, fonts, XY coordinates, scroll lines, etc. Just a simple matter of reading the Xwindow resource docs.
However, the terminal window of choice for simple command-line applications is dtterm. The reason is that it actually has separate data space and font size menus. The data space is rows and columns, while the font is measured in point size. dtterm is a basic DEC terminal (not a vt100, but a vt220).
Now if all this sounds incredibly complicated just to get a simple text window that you can magnify, you'd be quite accurate. Xwindows was always designed for graphics (colors, shapes, animation, drawings, etc) but is very poor at plain text. Now many people want a "GUI" but end up using xterm, dtterm or hpterm with their obtuse appearance settings. My recommendation for text windows is to use a modern terminal emulator that runs on the PC (which is *NOT* Hyperterminal). Not only do you get Windows-like menus but you avoid transmitting kilobytes of data over the network to specify the fonts and the colors and the cursor, etc, not to mention that each Xwindow emulator window is running (chewing up CPU cycles) on the server, not your PC.
My choice is Reflection for HP (which is not Reflection/X). This terminal emulator is the best tool for managing dozens to hundreds of machines using ssh or telnet, incredibly easy macro generator for automated tasks including auto-login, completely scalable fonts (everything gets bigger with the window), thousands of lines of scroll buffer space, thousands of color choices, and most important, it is an HP terminal emnulator (VT is also included) which works flawlessly with SAM and swinstall and Glance. I don't work for WRQ (
www.wrq.com), I'm just a very satisfied user. And support is phenomenal. I think the average tenure in support was something like 6 or 8 years so you always talk to an expert.
Bill Hassell, sysadmin
