Subject: Re: FVWM: i can't run fvwm 2.4

From: John Latham <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 18:26:54 +0100

> From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
> Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 11:00:04 +0200

> On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 01:51:56PM +0200, Imre Vida wrote:
> >  On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 09:14:54AM +0000, Mikhael Goikhman wrote:
> >  > On 23 Aug 2002 23:32:02 +0200, Imre Vida wrote:
> >  > > 
> >  > > This also suggests that the maintainers are aware of (at least some) 
> >  > > problems on this "front". This is to put it very softly, as John did 
> >  > > it earlier "a bit naughty" against all those "stupid users" like me.
> >  > 
> >  > Well, the multibyte support is marked experimental in 2.4.x and disabled
> >  > by default. Sorry it caused you any problems.
> >  
> >  sorry, the criticism was not directed against you.
> >  I was just somewhat puzzled by what you said.
> >  To have an experimetal feature is fine, but to have it 
> >  enabled in a "stable" distribution (Debian and RH) is not
> >  - especially when it is not documented for the user.
> >  But again this should be directed to a different forum.
>
> Let's put it this way:  It's idiotic.

I might be able to throw some light on it, at least for Red Hat's `error'. By
coincidence, I was last night looking at the spec file for Red Hat's
fvwm2.4.6, and also for fvwm2.2.4. I was amazed to see ``--enable-multi-byte''
in the 2.*2*.4 version -- I had thought the multi-byte option only appeared
experimentally in 2.4. Then I saw a patch file that Red Hat had added to their
2.2.4 RPM, to support multi-byte in 2.2.4 (and possibly earlier versions too).

This patch may have been contributed to or from the fvwm-developers at the
time: e.g. perhaps it was an early version of what appeared in 2.4? Anyway,
clearly Red Hat discarded the patch file in their 2.4 RPM, as I assume it
would not have matched anymore.

So Red Hat simply failed to switch *off* multi-byte support when it, in
effect, *became* experimental -- perhaps a careless oversight, or perhaps an
optimistic perspective, but not quite as looney as if they switched it *on*
for the first time, like I had assumed.

Maybe it's related to their apparent intentions of support for fvwm, i.e.
taking their eye off an old ball before letting it drop?

Speaking of such, the reason I was looking at these old specs was because I
was building a Red Hat ready fvwm2.5.2 RPM which we are probably going to use
here at Manchester CS. I know there are RPMS on SourceForge, but they're not
actually Red Hat ready (i.e. literally plug and play on a standard RH7
system). So I started off from Red Hat's own 2.4.6 spec file. I will probably
build a 2.5.3 one too. Is it worth me putting them on the web?

> Bye
> Dominik ^_^  ^_^

Best wishes, John Latham
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---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 10:17:29 +0200

On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 06:26:54PM +0100, John Latham wrote:

[snip]

> I > was building a Red Hat ready fvwm2.5.2 RPM

> which we are probably going to use here at Manchester CS.

Don't do that!  It's not even alpha quality.

Bye

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

 --
Dominik Vogt, mail: [email-masked], phone: 0721/91374-382
Schlund + Partner AG, Erbprinzenstr. 4-12, D-76133 Karlsruhe
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