Subject: silent horror: A user's opinion

From: [email-masked] (Tim Rightnour)
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 01:04:23 -0700 (MST)

Please send any replies to [email-masked], or this list.. I cannot receive
mail at the address listed in the reply-to.

I don't normally read this mailing list, nor any FVWM mailing list.. as a
matter of fact, I just kind of wandered into it on the FTP site, and was
wondering if there was any development still going on.  (You would never know
from the web page)

Now I see this scheme thing..  My first gut response to things like scwm
is pretty simple.. "Ack, I don't want to learn a new language, I just want
a WM."  There is an initial "fear" that a user will have when faced with a
language embedded configuration method.  And you cannot reasonably blame them.
Alot of the examples they see involve complex constructs that they can't
possibly make out. Sure you can make the point that it's really not that much
harder than the current .rc file is to configure, and you are probably right.
But the fear factor is a big deal..

Now to take it a step further, and have all this guile interpreter stuff in
the code.  Sure, thats a win for some people.  The idea that you can
reconfigure your menus, and have it take effect on the fly might be great.
It's not for me.  I use fvwm2 at work and at home.  At work I have a very
stripped down, basic configuration, with some very simple bindings.  Basicly
something I could do with 1.24 if it wasn't for the use of IconMan.

At home I use the same thing pretty much, except it uses more colors.

I don't like, or even *use* the menus.  At home, there are about 10-20
applications I use regularly, and I launch those from Wharf. (ripped right
out of afterstep, works fine)  I use a menu at work to lauch xterms to other
machines..  something that can be pretty much hardcoded (and is)

What is the gain to me of having guile float around my memory?  The *only*,
and let me stress _only_ reason I use fvwm, is that I like keybindings, and
the ability to make the borders look like I want them to.  As a matter of
fact, I've tossed around the idea of ripping 1.24 apart and throwing in some
of the toys from Afterstep, Fvwm2, and the like, and stripping out the rest
of the cruft.  All I want is a windowmanager with a pager, keybindings, and
a configurable border style and buttons.  If applications like Wharf and
FvwmButtons could be fixed enough that they were just normal X-apps, and would
work under any WM.. I would be a really happy fellow.

Someone else mentioned something about the BSD's breaking apart.  (A comment I
resent being actively involved with NetBSD) The reason the BSD's broke apart,
is because developers had significantly different ideas of what direction
the project should take.  This is a problem you might be hitting right this
second. You will never make users like me happy, who want static, simple
environments that do exactly what they want it to do, and have very little
cruft.  (Everyone's idea of cruft will be different) If you bring guile in,
you are liable to lose every user who doesn't want to use the features, and
thus the bloat of guile.  They certainly won't be staying with the old fvwm2,
because noone is supporting it anymore. They will look elsewhere.

So that leaves you with two options.  
1) Split.  Not allways a bad option, except you will eventually be unable 
to share code, and development will be slower on both fronts.
2) Merge, but keep the code ifdeffable.  This means you need to be able to
compile with -DNO_GUILE_EXTENSIONS and get a sane usable window manager out
of it.

Let me stress, that staying split, and then turning around and adding if/else
and variables to the parser, is rediculous.  If you want launguage features,
add the language.  Don't stay split, and then peice together your own 
language over the next 3 years.  Because eventually someone will want a for 
loop, or a case statement, or whatever.. and then what?

Thanks for listening to my little tirade.  I'm just a user here.  I certainly
am not going to side with anyone, or even have an ongoing discussion about
it with people..  I just wanted to make an outside ovservation/opinion 
to the relvant people.

Tim Rightnour
[email-masked]
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