Re: [ferret_users] suppress X window

["Ansley C. Manke" <ansley.b.manke@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ryo,

I don't know why what you are trying is not working; this is what -batch is intended for.  My experiments with commands such as you show seem to be working ok.  You could try what you're doing but with the postscript batch option, which will write a postscript file, but also execute your metafile commands.

# Call Ferret many times, changing the parameter n

for n in . . . ; do

    ferret -batch dummy.ps -script myscript.jnl $n

done

Ferret's batch modes store the graphics outputs to files. The -gif startup option saves graphics command outputs directly to the gif file. And 'batch' mode needs somewhere to have the graphics outputs going; either a postscript file or metafile.  It doesn't just store that info in memory, as PyFerret does in its -nodisplay mode.

Moving forward I hope you'll use PyFerret.  Then your script would not need metafile commands (though pyferret will ignore metafile commands that may be in your existing scripts), and there doesn't need to be  any translation to a metafile to pdf or postscript, but only a  FRAME command with the right file type.  The call would look like:

    pyferet -nodisplay  -script myscript.jnl $n

and the script would need only:

[plot commands with argument ($1)]
frame/file=filename_($1).pdf

On 12/17/2018 12:28 AM, Ryo Furue wrote:

Dear Ferret users,

I was wondering how to prevent the Ferret window to steal the focus.

I guess I need a version of the "-batch" command line option that doesn't try to redirect the metafile output, but there may be other solutions.

I have a self-contained Ferret script that looks like

set mode metafile

. . . plot something . . .

cancel mode metafile

ppl clsplt

SPAWN  . . . shell commends to process the metafile to produce PDF . . .

The problem is when I call it from within a shell script repeatedly

# Call Ferret many times, changing the parameter n

for n in . . . ; do

    ferret -script myscript.jnl $n

done

Ferret shows a window each time it's invoked, which steals the mouse focus. So, basically, I can't do anything while the script is running.

I thought I could use a fake "-batch" option as in

ferret -batch metafile.plt -script myscript.jnl $n

but it fails.  I don't know exactly how, but it doesn't probably interact well with "set mode metafile" within the script.

Would it be easy to implement a version of -batch option that does nothing but to suppress window output or a version of -gif option to allow metafile?

Regards,

Ryo