Bingo! Precisely it . . ."an X server". Well, you see, all I've read are comments like "after the make, all it takes is
$ firefox" , but never any mention of "Oh, by the way, you've got to start an X server." I'm not even trying to suggest that I know everything about programming applications, but I've written a lot of interactive code over the past 35 years. If I were writing a startup shell script or an OS/400 CLP to invoke an application . . .and if the application needed a running X server (whatever), then I'd put in something like "if an X server is not running, then (duh) start one".
This may sound incredible, but since around January 2002, I've run FreeBSD v4.11 with only a command line console. Just last evening, I ported via the internet v7.2 and made FireFox3, so this is a new thing for me. As I mentioned before, this will make perfect sense once I understand it
Thanks, I'll readup on X servers.
RW