Apparently there is another way to do this, and it is posted online. Using an .xinitrc file is another clean way to set this up, and there are some other things you can do too. I didn’t find this one, but got feedback on the local northwestern OS X listserv:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2004082505230779

thanks Conrad

Back in OS X 10.2 - Jaguar it was pretty easy to launch X11 apps through the native OS X Terminal.app combined with Apples X11 implementation. All you had to do was start X11 and launch a Terminal. If Terminal was running, you quit the app and restarted it after running X11. Since 10.3 - Panther, it seemed that this feature didn’t work anymore. I’ve looked around on the web for people who’d figured out how to do it, but the general concensus seems to be people don’t do it, they just use the xterm that comes with X11.

Well I don’t really like the xterm compared to Terminal.app, so I’ve found this whole using two different terminals annoying. Terminal is tightly integrated into OS X, with drag and drop file to pathname conversion, easy cut & paste, a GUI for setting preferences, and probably best of all, Quartz tranparency, which makes it easy to see code through the window, and looks bitchin. xterm is pretty much an old school unix term, which requires modification of a dot settings file or command line arguments to tweak its behavior and looks, and of course, there’s no transparency. A while back I gave up on trying to figure it out, but I tried something else today and it worked.

It turns out that you can get the Terminal.app in X11 just by running it through X11. Two easy ways to do this:

1. Launch an xterm, then launch Terminal.app from the command line: /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/MacOS/Terminal &
2. The other option is just to stick that same path in an X11 shortcut by adding it to the Applications pulldown on the menu bar when in X11. I think you can make Apple Script launchers to do this also, but I haven’t messed with that.

Both methods do the same thing, I prefer (2) which doesn’t require launching the old school xterm. But doing it this way, my X11 apps seem to launch no problem through Terminal; likewise for X11 forwarding.

A couple peculiarities to note. First, the Terminal window will start up underneath your other windows, not on top. Second, the Terminal icon will show up in the dock, but if you already have a shortcut in your dock to the Terminal, it won’t bounce and get an arrow under it — the system will put a second, active Terminal icon in the dock (or third, or fourth depending on how many times you launch it). I don’t know why those two things happen, but it’s probably obvious to some real Mac hackers.

Tiger’s (10.4) out now, but I don’t have Tiger yet, so I don’t know if this trick works there. I don’t think too much work went into upgrading Apple’s X11 for Tiger, so I would guess that it still works, but these upgrades are bananas.

• 4/21/05 Cal’s Liquors & Bar
• 4/23/05 Open End Gallery. part of Version 05.

small bathroom fire show
monday 4/18
at the funky buddha lounge
728 W. Grand Ave., Chicago
(Just east of halsted/milwaukee, and the grand blue line stop)

not sure when it kicks off, prob after 9.