[ REQ 5064]: question re geomview

["Mark Phillips" <mbp>]

Date: Fri, 23 Sep 94 13:25:30 EDT
From: taylor at gnumath.rutgers.edu (Jean E. Taylor)
To: mbp at geom
Subject: question re geomview


I don't know if you are the person to ask this question, so please pass it
on to Tamara or Stuart or whomever if appropriate. (I looked in the Geomview
manual -- Nov. 1993 version -- and I didn't see any address given for 
questions or tech support, just the register at geom.umn.edu address.)

The question is what it takes to run geomview on one SGI and display it
on another, both computers being at Rutgers but not networked so that no
passwords are required between one and the other.  I gather from the section
on Mathematica and Geomview that it may be impossible.  It is an issue for
me because I'm encouraging students in my interdisciplinary course to use
evolver and geomview, and yet when they try to run geomview from computers
in engineering -- or in fact, on any computer except the 3 on which I've
individually installed geomview -- the display does not work.  (Yes, we
did do the xhost + on the non-jeti computer and setenv DISPLAY command
properly on jeti.)

I cannot even run geomview on jeti and view it on jet, even though both are
math dept computers, and even the disks of each are mounted on the other.
(But like I said, I currently have the inefficient system of having a differ-
ent copy of geomview mounted on each -- I'm not even using the shared disks--
so this is not a problem for me.  It IS a problem for the students who are
using computers other than jet, jeti, and dilithium.)

One answer of course is to install geomview on any sgi that anyone wants to
use.  There seem to be objections to this based on many factors, among which
are included that the computers belong to someone else and the students are
using them only on the sufferance of the owner, and the owner might not want
100 Meg of space used up by geomview.

Note that it is possible for these students to use evolver on jeti while
sitting at another computer; it is just that they have to use the generic
X-window graphics.

Jean Taylor