I got the main executable to accept flags. The problem was Gnome kept trying to read them. The solution is to read them before importing any module that uses Gnome. There is a way to make use of Gnome's argument parsing, but it's not in pygnome yet. Besides, Loci won't always use Gnome. So, this is how you start Loci (copied from loci --help): ----------------- Usage: loci [OPTION...] (for now, only one option at a time) -m, --middle=STATE Run (STATE=on) middle or not (STATE=off) -g, --gnome=STATE Run (STATE=on) gnome or not (STATE=off) -?, --help Show this help message --version Display version Default: loci --middle=on --gnome=on ----------------- So, just typing... ./loci will start everything. Yes, the middle and front start together. And if you want to start only the middle, type... ./loci -g=off There is still a problem shutting down Loci. You will need to ^C or kill it. Cheers. Jeff -- +----------------------------------+ | J.W. Bizzaro | | | | http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff/ | | | | BIOINFORMATICS.ORG | | The Open Lab | | | | http://bioinformatics.org/ | +----------------------------------+