O.K., I did it...

[John E. Parks]

Well.... I wrote it, so let me explain it.  The d.start.x0 thing should
  be removed from the manual. Period!  However, if your interested, way
  back in release 3, it was helpful to write a shell script which would
  not only start the graphics driver running, but also display it on
  the screen (with that release, the graphics display would not appear
  onscreen until the monitor (display window) was either selected or
  started again.

Out of habbit and convenience, I carried on with the shell script(s) in
  4.0 which look something like this.

  /usr2/grass4/sun4/driver/XDRIVER "/dev/grass4/fifo.1a /dev/grass4/fifo.1b"
  /usr2/grass4/sun4/driver/XDRIVER "/dev/grass4/fifo.1a /dev/grass4/fifo.1b"

No big deal right?  Well, it was a whole lot more useful in version 3.x,
  but has less worth now.

  d.mon start=x0

is just as easy as

  d.start.x0.

You choose.
    __                   __
   /  )      /          /  )     Geographer - U.S. Geological Survey
  /   / _   /_  _      /__/      Water Resources Division, Caribbean Dist.
  (__/_(_)_/ /_/ )_   /   _      Niskey Mail Box P-18, 8000 Nisky Center
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   /                             phone: (809) 774-4307 St. Thomas
John E. Parks                    f a x: (809) 777-8910
[jeparks at qvarsa.er.usgs.gov]  or [john at tang.uark.edu] Internet