Subject: FVWM: high level examples

From: jlf <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 22:04:18 -0500 (EST)

hello all, before i start -- i've recently signed up to this list but i
have gone through the archive quite a bit.  (it would be nice if it were
searchable.. ;-)  anyhow, i am quite hooked on fvwm and recently took the
time to update to the latest stable release on my own -- as this
university last compiled fvwm sometime in early 1999.  ugh.

i have searched through quite a large number of websites looking for
practical examples of high level configuring of fvwm .. i have found only
a handful!  so i am hoping that a few kind souls here would be willing to
share their setups with me -- it doesn't need to be fully documented or
anything like that.

i am most interested in people who use M4 preprocessing and how they
achieve their ideal configurations.  thank you in advance..

-jesse

--
Visit the official FVWM web page at <URL: http://www.fvwm.org/>.
To unsubscribe from the list, send "unsubscribe fvwm" in the body of a
message to [email-masked].
To report problems, send mail to [email-masked].

---

From: "S. Anderson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 21:04:22 -0700

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 10:04:18PM -0500, jlf wrote:
...
> share their setups with me -- it doesn't need to be fully documented or

Here is my fvwm2rc, Its not very high level, and it has many cobwebs
but i like it. :-)

http://www.xmission.com/~sa/stuff/dotfiles/fvwm2rc-03-05-02.tar.bz2
http://www.xmission.com/~sa/screenshot-03-05-02.png

---

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 04:21:05 +0000

> achieve their ideal configurations.  thank you in advance..

Nowadays M4 preprocessing is not needed to write an ideal configuration.
m4 is pretty limited, it may be useful for simple things, but for more
complex needs you should write shell/perl scripts that create an fvwm
configuration on the fly, and read their output using PipeRead.

Also new versions include a heap of dynamical variables starting with a
dollar, that provide information about the current window, current
viewport and more.

If you want to view an advanced setup, try fvwm-themes. There are at least
several people that consider it ideal for configurability/functionality.
It uses some interesting ideas including several kinds of preprocessing.
You may use fvwm-themes as a source of the correct, up to date samples.
I also recomment all links at the bottom of http://fvwm-themes.sf.net/ .

Regards,
Mikhael.

---

From: Gregg Dameron <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 09:21:52 -0700

> configuration on the fly, and read their output using PipeRead.

I have used FvwmM4 to conditionally show/hide items in my TaskBar's Start menu
tree on the fly.  I have often wondered if using PipeRead with a script is
"better", but I wonder if the PipeRead approach results in a greater number of
Unix processes being forked, and so might be visibly slower on a highly
CPU-bound system (as ours are).  Can anyone confirm or deny?

Gregg Dameron

---

From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 12:09:22 -0500

> CPU-bound system (as ours are).  Can anyone confirm or deny?

I doubt either approach could take much CPU time.

In one case, m4 needs to be invoked, in the other case
a shell is invoked.  I guess the trade off would be in
the amount of processing power each uses.

Still, for the small amount of data each processes...

-- 
Dan Espen                           E-mail: [email-masked]
444 Hoes Lane  Room RRC 1C-214      Phone: (732) 699-5570
Piscataway, NJ 08854
--
Visit the official FVWM web page at <URL: http://www.fvwm.org/>.
To unsubscribe from the list, send "unsubscribe fvwm" in the body of a
message to [email-masked].
To report problems, send mail to [email-masked].

---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 18:35:47 +0100

> CPU-bound system (as ours are).  Can anyone confirm or deny?

That entirely depends on how you write the command that is
executed with PipeRead.  If you use only commands built in to a
shell or a perl script, it shouldn't be much slower.

Bye

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

 --
Dominik Vogt, [email-masked]
Reply-To: [email-masked]
--
Visit the official FVWM web page at <URL: http://www.fvwm.org/>.
To unsubscribe from the list, send "unsubscribe fvwm" in the body of a
message to [email-masked].
To report problems, send mail to [email-masked].

---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 19:29:03 +0100

> the amount of processing power each uses.

Don't underestimate the time executing commands from a shell
takes.  When I first wrote the fvwm-menu-directory script, it
called grep/sed/ls repeatedly and slowed down to a crawl for
large directories (up to about 30 seconds to generate the menu for
the /dev directory).

Bye

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

---

From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 13:49:54 -0500

Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]> writes:
> > > I have used FvwmM4 to conditionally show/hide items in my TaskBar's Start
>  men
> > > u
> > > "better", but I wonder if the PipeRead approach results in a greater numb
> er o
> > > f

Actually, I had a similar experience with the generation of
a huge set of menus of images, but I didn't think there was a lot
of input in this case.

I meant to mention "small amount of input" in my reply.