On 06.07.2011, at 04:30, David T. Lewis wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 09:07:46PM -0500, Chris Muller wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Tom Rushworth <tom.b.rushworth at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> It's been a while since I used Linux, but it should still have multiple
>>> console support (alt+Fn or alt+ctrl+Fn or something like that to go to
>>> screen n). ?You should be able to get multiple Xservers/window managers
>>> up on the different consoles, and then leave one in squeak full screen
>>> and another in the regular desktop. ?I've never tried the multiple
>>> X-server part, but unless the first console is somehow very special
>>> (e.g. it's the only one with graphics) you shouldn't have too much trouble.
>> 
>> Ah, thanks for reminding me about that!  That would certainly be
>> useful to be able to get to a terminal to kill the squeak process.
> 
> Yes, this is the most straightforward way to get access to a good
> old-fashioned terminal if the GUI gets hosed for some reason.
> 
>> Launching squeak under X from one of the other terminals is an
>> interesting idea but would still suffer from the same modality problem
>> - e.g., I'm in "Squeak mode" or I'm not, and drag-and-drop interaction
>> from other OS windows (e.g., file-manager) wouldn't be possible.
> 
> This also will work (multiple X displays assigned to multiple virtual
> terminals). But it is not very useful in this case, because just
> opening an text terminal <ctl><alt><F2> gives you all the access
> you need to kill the offending Squeak VM process, and <ctl><alt><F7>
> will take you back to the virtual terminal that is running X11.
> 
> But it sounds like the underlying issue is that we may be having
> trouble interrupting the image reliably, especially when running
> under Cog.

That is an issue, but mostly unrelated to this one.

On other platforms it's just really convenient to be able to alt-tab quickly to another application and alt-tab back to your full-screen Squeak workspace. Like, for googling something. I do that all the time.

- Bert -