Subject: FVWM: Hi I need some help!

From: "Thomas Wright" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 02:58:32 +0200

Hi there! I'm going crazy over this problem: please help!

I need an instance of Netscape invisible to my Taskbar, running fullscreen (like MS Active Desktop) for a kiosk system based on fvwm95 and Netscape (3.0 at the moment, maybe 4.7 later). So far no prob, simple 'Style "Netscape" WindowListSkip'.....

On the displayed webpage (which is now my Desktop) I have a link to open a new Netscape to Browse the Internet ('su' to a different User for Bookmarks, prefs etc.).... the problem is, these browser-windows have to be visible to the Taskbar, first thing I tried was calling Netscape from a script (not called Netscape), giving the script different styles - OK, it didn't work, thats a shame, it would have been so easy ....
Then I tried changing the X Resources of the Netscape Window (either Class, Title, Name or simply the WindowListSkip resource), but I fear I'm not doing it right ..... (e.g. I tried calling stuff like 'netscape -xrm "Netscape*WindowListSkip: No/Yes') ....

The documentation on X resources are really poor, or can one really only change colors and fonts???

Is there any way of having taskbar-visible/invisible occurances of the same Prog (Netscape) at the same time on the same desktop (remember they are run by seperate users)   ????

Another possibility is of course to use a different Window-manager, are there any that support what I want to do ????

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From: Michael Han <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 18:30:30 -0700

On Tue, Sep 19, 2000 at 02:58:32AM +0200, Thomas Wright wrote:
> I need an instance of Netscape invisible to my Taskbar, running
> fullscreen (like MS Active Desktop) for a kiosk system based on
> fvwm95 and Netscape (3.0 at the moment, maybe 4.7 later). So far no
> prob, simple 'Style "Netscape" WindowListSkip'.....
> 
> On the displayed webpage (which is now my Desktop) I have a link to
> open a new Netscape to Browse the Internet ('su' to a different User
> for Bookmarks, prefs etc.).... the problem is, these browser-windows
> have to be visible to the Taskbar, first thing I tried was calling
> Netscape from a script (not called Netscape), giving the script
> different styles - OK, it didn't work, thats a shame, it would have
> been so easy ....

That approach is a non-starter.

> Then I tried changing the X Resources of the Netscape Window (either
> Class, Title, Name or simply the WindowListSkip resource), but I
> fear I'm not doing it right ..... (e.g. I tried calling stuff like
> 'netscape -xrm "Netscape*WindowListSkip: No/Yes') ....

That's also doomed to failure. Fvwm pays no attention to X Resources.

> only change colors and fonts???

You can change a *lot* with resources. But you can't change FVWM's
behavior with them (except in some interesting corner-cases).

> Is there any way of having taskbar-visible/invisible occurances of
> the same Prog (Netscape) at the same time on the same desktop
> (remember they are run by seperate users)   ????

After fiddling with your problem quite a bit, I've determined that
your best bet is to do some stuff with the initialization builtin
function in fvwm. I imagine something like:

+       "I"     Exec exec netscape
+       "I"     Wait Netscape
+       "I"     Style Netscape WindowListHit

will work if you throw it in your initialization function. N.B. I
don't think fvwm95 has a Wait builtin. Basically, what you're doing is
running the first netscape at fvwm's startup, waiting until it gets
styled with normal settings, and then changing the styling back to
normal.

> Another possibility is of course to use a different Window-manager,
> are there any that support what I want to do ????

Yes, fvwm2.2. fvwm95 is hopelessly neglected (it was a forked project
that is no longer maintained by anyone. fvwm2 is very much alive, very
much under development, and provides a Wait function.
-- 
[email-masked]                            http://www.mikehan.com/
coffee achiever                              San Francisco, California
"Notice how I blame my own mistakes on the lack of rules?" - Dan Espen 
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---

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 06:26:41 +0200

> styled with normal settings, and then changing the styling back to

Sorry, Michael, it is not a solution. Please don't even try this. :)
Even if some fvwm version allows here two Netscape windows to have
different styles, it is more than temporarily.

  1) On Recapture all your Netscape windows will do the same
  2) Since this is in InitFunction, this for sure will not work on Restart
  3) This can't work in 2.3/2.4, where the last line is evaluated for
  both existing and new windows, i.e. all Netscape windows do the same

The real solution is to try to have the second Netscape with a different
resource/class. I didn't find how to do this using -xrm or Netscape.ad,
but this does not essentially mean it can't be done. However I just edited
the netscape binary and successfully replaced Navigator by Myvigator...

Regards,
Mikhael.