Subject: Hooking FVWM to gnome

From: "Paul D. Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 16:50:06 -0400

OK, I could have sworn I'd saved an email from the list on how to do
this, but I can't find it, and (as per my previous mail) my efforts at
searching the archives are proving frustrating.

Also, I don't find anything in the latest FAQ, etc. about it... are we
really missing this documentation from the distribution, or can I just
not find it?

Anyway, I'm trying to get used to Gnome, to see what it can do.  I just
can't get used to E or sawfish, though, I'm missing too much of my fvwm
functionality (Forms and FvwmButtons in particular) and I can't find
functionally equivalent alternatives.  So, I want to try to use FVWM
from within Gnome.

If someone gives me some pointers on the magic needed to get Gnome to
see fvwm as a window manager that can be picked from the list, and/or
otherwise integrated, I'll try to write something about it down
somewhere (the FAQ?) and submit it.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Paul D. Smith <[email-masked]>         Network Management Development
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
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From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 03:10:17 +0200

Yes, searching mail archives sometimes is not very effective.
For example "GNOME; Mikhael" returns much more than 50 results, so the
last one is from 11/1999. "Mikhael; GNOME" returns only 35, but it is
obviously incomplete. Here are some URLs, which can help you to write FAQ,
there are more, probably, but you should try to search yourself.

  http://www.hpc.uh.edu/fvwm/archive/0005/msg00523.html
  http://www.hpc.uh.edu/fvwm/archive/0008/msg00144.html

You can also read about gnome and session managers in the fvwm-themes FAQ.

In short, there are 2 choices. The second was reported to be slow now,
also there are some artifacts with it.

1) Running pure GNOME-compilant fvwm, not on top of GNOME.
   -------------------------------------------------------
Just call fvwm2 in your ~/.Xclients or ~/.xinitrc. Use GNOME apps freely.

2) Running fvwm as a GNOME window manager (while running gnome-session).
   ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Go to the "System menus/Settings/Desktop/Window Managers" gnome panel
foot menu and create an entry for fvwm. Choose it.

Regards,
Mikhael.

---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 19:51:55 +0200

> 1) Running pure GNOME-compilant fvwm, not on top of GNOME.

Hm, didn't this make it into the FAQ?

Bye

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

--
Dominik Vogt, [email-masked]
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From: "Paul D. Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 Sep 2000 15:44:24 -0400

%% Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]> writes:

  mg> In short, there are 2 choices. The second was reported to be slow now,
  mg> also there are some artifacts with it.

  mg> 1) Running pure GNOME-compilant fvwm, not on top of GNOME.
  mg>    -------------------------------------------------------
  mg> Just call fvwm2 in your ~/.Xclients or ~/.xinitrc. Use GNOME apps freely.

  mg> 2) Running fvwm as a GNOME window manager (while running gnome-session).
  mg>    ---------------------------------------------------------------------
  mg> Go to the "System menus/Settings/Desktop/Window Managers" gnome panel
  mg> foot menu and create an entry for fvwm. Choose it.

The second seemed the most obvious, so that's what I started with so
far.  I haven't noticed it being particularly slow?

Anyway, I have a lot of questions; thinks kinda sorta work but not
really.

 1) Can I get the GNOME panel pager to work with FVWM?  It comes up with
    the right number of pages visible depending on what I set
    DesktopSize to, so at least that far it's OK.

    But, clicking on the "other" pages in the GNOME panel pager doesn't
    do anything; my viewport doesn't move.

    I checked the Advanced properties for the GNOME panel pager and
    selected all the WM workarounds checkboxes (before I was using
    sawfish so all of them except "Window manager expects pager to
    modify area+desktop properties directly" were already selected; I
    selected that one too but it didn't make any difference).

    Can I use this, or not?  If not, what do I do?  Swallow the FVWM
    pager into the panel?

    Which brings me to my second problem:

 2) I can't seem to get the panel to swallow FVWM modules very well.
    For example, I added a swallow app for FvwmButtons, and when I
    created it it did indeed swallow the existing buttons.

    But, when I restarted FVWM, the FvwmButtons module obviously
    restarted, and when old FvwmButtons went away the swallow app on the
    GNOME panel disappeared as if it'd never existed, and the new
    FvwmButtons wasn't swallowed at all.  Also, when I log out and log
    back in my FvwmButtons isn't swallowed.

Is it possible to get FVWM to play footsie with the GNOME panel in a
reasonable way?  Or is there some better way to set this up?

---

From: "Paul D. Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 Sep 2000 16:26:39 -0400

Hmm, so I'm trying some different things to handle swallowing.

First, I added an "FvwmCommand FvwmButtons" as the exe command line for
the swallowed app (I do start the FvwmCommandS module and I can run that
from the command line and it works).  However, I can't figure out how to
make the panel invoke that command; I still have an empty section in my
panel and my buttons are free-floating.

Basically, the swallow functionality in the GNOME panel seems pretty
damn anemic.

So, then I tried logging in again.  This time, according to my error
logs, the panel came up and tried to run FvwmCommand before FVWM had
created the FvwmCommandS module; I got this error:

  No such file or directory FvwmCommand error in opening message fifo

So then I thought I'd try to change the start order of the panel and/or
FVWM to see if I couldn't ensure FVWM was up before the panel.  I looked
at the Session Properties list and FVWM isn't listed as one of the
running processes here!

Why not?  I thought all GNOME-compliant processes should be listed
here.  Heck, even rxvt is here!

Anyone have any ideas on this?

---

From: Matt Rossmiller <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 15:28:30 -0500

gnome is slow, therefore, running fvwm with gnome is slow ( at least, it's
slower than running without gnome)

I am using an older version of gnome, and (apart from the bugs in the pager)
the pager works fine with fvwm.  my version of the pager does not have an
option for wm compatibility, you may want to disable all of these settings..

fvwm should fully understand the basic gnome pager operations (min/max, 
winshade, sticky)

if you have mulitple desktops, use GnomeShowDesks <# of desks for gnome>
in your .fvwm2rc to tell gnome about these...I'm not sure if you need to
set this to 1 for the Gnome pager to work properly with a single desk setup
or not.

the only way I've been able to work out 'swallowed' apps with gnome is by 
comming up with command lines that gnome can run without knowing anything
about fvwm.  what I mean is...if you can't supply a command that can be 
run from the shell, gnome seems to have trouble consistantly swallowing the 
app.

what I do is use the fvwm pager (which I feel is nicer anyhow) in one corner
and put the gnome toolbar in another.

Good Luck,
-Matt

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Matthew D. Rossmiller
Celox Networks, Inc	
Member of Technical Staff
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From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 01:08:47 +0200

> far.  I haven't noticed it being particularly slow?

Well, I have fixed a start-up timeout (about 20 seconds) two days ago.
Which setup is more obvious is not by itself obvious. I have $WINDOWMANAGER
line in my .xinitrc and before starting X, I define this var to be one of:

  "fvwm2 -f some-rc"
  fvwm-themes-start
  gnome-session
  xterm  # really useful

Similarly, I have several fvwm based WM's defined in GNOME: fvwm with some
config, fvwm 2.2.4, fvwm-themes. So I can switch between several setups.

>     do anything; my viewport doesn't move.

Woops, it worked just fine some weeks ago, even in pure fvwm outside of
gnome-session (the first method). Something was broken recently.

>     created it it did indeed swallow the existing buttons.

There is somewhere my answer to similar question on [email-masked].
It is possible if you use tricks, but I don't really suggest to swallow
fvwm modules into panel if you use gnome-session. It is better if you run
gnome-session from InitFunction in pure fvwm, then you can try to
syncronize panel and modules using ModuleSynchronous. But even this is not
really suggested. Just run them in different corners like here:

  http://www.fvwm.org/screenshots/Mikhael-desk-1152x864.gif

Regards,
Mikhael.

---

From: Olivier Chapuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 06:37:25 +0200

> gnome-session (the first method). Something was broken recently.

Yep, I broke somthing to fix a core dump. Now the GNOME
pager worh again.
Olivier