Subject: Re: FVWM: TaskBar and Pager together?

From: Tessa Lau <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 22:00:44 -0500

> I am not surprised that GNOME2 does not work well with FVWM. I hope
> that FVWM 2.6 will work not so bad. However, can you describe the
> problem you had?

The problems are mostly with GNOME2, not with FVWM.

I'm using the GNOME2 out of Debian unstable.  First, I couldn't figure
out how to tell GNOME2 to use FVWM instead of sawfish.  I had to
change the x-window-manager symlink to point to my local copy of FVWM
(built from source, since Debian doesn't have the unstable 2.5.x
branch).

Second, my default FVWM config on Debian uses manual placement.  When
GNOME starts up, I have to manually position two panel windows and
Nautilus's desktop window (which forms the active desktop).  If I use
smart placement, both panels get placed near the top of the screen at
about geometry +0+50, the first one obscuring the one underneath.

Third, the deskguide applet shows 4x1 desktops, even though my FVWM
configuration sets DesktopSize 2x1.

> What about running just the gnome2 panel?

I really like some aspects of the GNOME2 panel.  However, it's
unpredictable and misbehaves occasionally in ways I can't reproduce.
For instance, just now when I used the panel's log out button, all my
apps closed but the X server didn't, so I had to Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to
get back to the gdm login screen.  I've never had FVWM fail to exit
when I tell it to.  (fvwm-themes, yes, FVWM itself, no :)

Other times, the GNOME windowlist and pager applets won't display any
FVWM windows.  Now they do, and I haven't deliberately changed
anything to make it work correctly.

Sometimes, the panel starts up at about geometry +0+50, so that I have
to reposition it manually to the top of the screen.  Sometimes it does
start up in the right place without me telling it to.

I've also had the panel get into a weird state.  It would create one
1-pixel-high panel in the upper left corner, one 1-pixel-high panel in
the lower right corner, and one offscreen panel (as evidenced by the
FvwmWinList listing).  That state persisted across reboots.  That
state persisted even when I deleted my ~/.gnome and ~/.gnome2
directories.  Now the panel is back to normal again.  Something I did
between last week and today caused the panel to reset its state, but
since I have no idea how it got fixed, I'm at its mercy if it ever
decides that it wants to misbehave again.

In contrast, FVWM and FvwmButtons are rock-stable and utterly
predictable.  I like FvwmButton's ability to swallow arbitrary apps,
which has worked since the old FVWM 1.x days.  In contrast, when I
upgraded from GNOME1 to GNOME2 all the applets changed and I couldn't
use the ones I was familiar with, including some I'd written myself.

> No you should use FvwmIconMan in the place of FvwmTaskBar and add a
> (swallowed) clock and move your task bar launchers to some new
> FvwmButtons buttons. For others mini apps you should find the good
> one's yourself (FvwmButtons can swallow AfterStep and WindowMaker
> applets) or you can do it yourself with FvmwScript. There are a mixer
> in fvwm-themes (under the script dir) and a FvwmScript battery monitor
> has been send recently to this list (~ 1st december, Subject:
> FvwmScript scripts eating memory).

I'll look into FvwmScript.  I looked at the AfterStep and WindowMaker
applets, but they seem to all be 64x64 --- whereas I'm on a laptop
with a small screen and want my panel-workalike to be no more than 24
pixels high.

Thanks,
--Tessa
--
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].