The `alfi_ws` Script (Unix only)

Description

The alfi_ws script is a perl script which will feed your environment variables and any command line arguments into Alfi, while starting Alfi via the standard WebStart mechanism. It gets around the Java limitation of ignoring environment variables, and the WebStart limitation of ignoring command line arguments by writing a very temporary file to where Alfi will look on startup. It also specifies Alfi's working directory to be your current working directory (i.e., the directory in which you executed the alfi_ws script.)

If starting Alfi via alfi_ws, these 2 environment variables will override any previous or default settings in Alfi for:

E2E_PATH - Alfi's use of this value is documented here.

ALFI__WINDOW_MANAGER - (that's 2 underscores following ALFI) If Alfi knows which window manager it is being run under, it can mitigate a couple of very minor problems. Currently only a value of "fvwm" matters, as FVWM is the only window manager we know of which results in slightly strange behavior from Alfi. These issues are documented here.

You can use command line arguments when starting Alfi via alfi_ws. Currently these arguments may only be names of box files for Alfi to open at startup. Here is a sample invocation:

% alfi_ws COC.box GetSusData.box

The alfi_ws script will override any previous working directory setting and use your cwd as Alfi's working directory.

Download and Configuration

Here is the alfi_ws perl script. Just move it to the directory you wish to work in, and configure the first 2 lines as follows:

Change "/usr/bin/perl" to the path of the perl installation on your machine.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
Change "/usr/local/bin/javaws" to the path of the java_ws (Java Web Start executable) installation on your machine.

my $WEBSTART = "/usr/local/bin/javaws";
Don't change anything else in the script, but now change the execution mode of the alfi_ws file to be executable.

% chmod +x alfi_ws
It should now be ready to run...

% alfi_ws

The alfi_ws Script (Unix only)

Description

Download and Configuration

The `alfi_ws` Script (Unix only)