Run X11 and command line apps using open

Feb 23, '04 09:30:00AM

Contributed by: Trezzer

It has already been documented that in 10.3 you can simply launch command line apps and X11 apps from Finder by clicking on them. I found out that this also works for X11 apps launched using open in the Terminal. If you try to launch them from the Terminal the usual *nix way, you will simply get an error saying that X11 isn't running (unless it actually is of course), but if you use open [x11_app_name], then X11 will launch and then start your chosen application.

If for some reason you should want to open a command line application in another Terminal session, you can also do this using open. This can be useful if you're usually using a Terminal.app replacement like GLTerm or iTerm and (for some reason) want something to launch in Apple's Terminal.app instead of your current one.

Comments (2)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20040216110037425