Subject: FVWM: FVWM 2.5.5 and GNOME/Nautilus 2 (RedHat 8.0)

From: Roland Roberts <[email-masked]>
Date: 01 Jan 2003 23:47:54 -0500

I'm trying to get GNOME to play nice with FVWM; it's mostly working,
but....

Near as I can tell, Nautilus either controls the whole desktop or none
at all.  That is, it will create desktop icons for me, but only if I
also let it control the background (image, color, whatever) as well.
If I don't want it to control the background, then it won't do the
desktop icons either.

Has anyone else played with this combination of GNOME/Nautilus 2 and
FVWM?  Do I have it right or is it possible to get Nautilus to leave
my background alone while still creating desktop icons?

roland
-- 
		       PGP Key ID: 66 BC 3B CD
Roland B. Roberts, PhD                             RL Enterprises
[email-masked]                            6818 Madeline Court
[email-masked]                           Brooklyn, NY 11220
--
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: Olivier Chapuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 10:53:47 +0100

> my background alone while still creating desktop icons?

No, I do not think so. It is not FVWM fault.

IMO, GNOME 2 and KDE >=2 (and in fact the EWMH spec.) take an
erroneous decision about what should be a window of desktop type:

  "This can include a single window containing desktop icons with the
  same dimensions as the screen, allowing the desktop environment to
  have full control of the desktop, without the need for proxying root
  window clicks."

  ...

  "This spec suggests implementing the file manager desktop by mapping
  a desktop-sized window (no shape) to all desktops, with
  _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DESKTOP.  This makes the desktop focusable and
  greatly simplifies implementation of the file manager.  It is also
  faster than managing lots of small shaped windows. The file manager
  draws the background on this window.  There should be a root
  property with a window handle for use in applications that want to
  draw the background (xearth)."

So what GNOME/Nautilus 2 do when you ask for icons desktop is to map
this desktop-sized window over the root window. IMO this is a dramatic
invention. GNOME 1/gmc solution was really better.

Note that you have the "D" context if you want bindings to some FVWM
actions over this desktop window. With

   Mouse 1 D M Menu MyFvwmMenuOverTheDesktop

Alt-Mouse 1 will give the MyFvwmMenuOverTheDesktop menu. Of course,
the problem here is that the desktop window has/needs some mouse
bindings so you should use appropriate modifiers. If not you override
these bindings with the FVWM one's. The last time I tried Nautilus the
Alt modifier was Ok (i.e., I do not think that Nautilus use Alt-Mouse1).

So, you should complaint at [email-masked] ...
I do it for you: I cc this message to this list.

Regards, Olivier

---

From: Bob Crochelt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 06:26:37 -0900 (AKST)

Roland,
that has been my experience as well.  You either get the icons and the 
background, or neither.  Since I like different background on my desktops, 
I can't have the icons.

-- 
Bob Crochelt, MD, PhD, FACS

PO Box 9399
Ketchikan, Alaska 99901-4399

[email-masked] or
[email-masked]

at work:
[email-masked]

In life, sorrow tends to last just a little longer than joy.
So we try to just touch the joy to alleviate the sorrow.

Abdul Razak al-Alawi
Conductor, Baghdad Symphony Orchestra

---

From: Roland Roberts <[email-masked]>
Date: 02 Jan 2003 11:26:14 -0500

>>>>> "Olivier" == Olivier Chapuis <[email-masked]> writes:

    Olivier> No, I do not think so. It is not FVWM fault.
    [...]

Thanks for the explanation.  I never suspected FVWM was at fault; it
was clear that Nautilus was intercepting all my mouse clicks.  It
doesn't bother me that they decided to do this, since some people
(like my wife) prefer to have such a desktop.  But it does annoy me
that they have taken away my control of the root window; I *use* those
extra menus as shortcuts.

regards,

roland

---

From: Havoc Pennington <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 11:28:29 -0500

> > my background alone while still creating desktop icons?

No, it isn't possible. But it's not fvwm's fault, it can't be done
with any WM.
 
> erroneous decision about what should be a window of desktop type:

The EWMH spec doesn't make a decision either way; it simply supports a
method for doing what both GNOME and KDE do. They don't have to use
_NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DESKTOP.

They do use it though because it's the best way to implement the
functionality. After trying all the different approaches both GNOME
and KDE independently came to that conclusion. The desktop does have
to be focusable, for example.

Anyone who strongly disagrees is welcome to try implementing desktop
icons the old way, the code is all open source, but all I can say is
have fun. ;-)

Havoc

---

From: Gordon Prieur <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 09:18:43 -0800

Roland,

     You can always stop running Nautilus. I did that so I could run
fvwm with Gnome and it works fine. Of course, I've never really liked
file managers anyway, but too many nautilus features interfere with
standard window manager features.

Gordon

---

From: Roland Roberts <[email-masked]>
Date: 06 Jan 2003 14:15:57 -0500

>>>>> "Gordon" == Gordon Prieur <[email-masked]> writes:

    Gordon> You can always stop running Nautilus. I did that so I
    Gordon> could run fvwm with Gnome and it works fine. Of course,
    Gordon> I've never really liked file managers anyway, but too many
    Gordon> nautilus features interfere with standard window manager
    Gordon> features.

This is what I ended up doing; I uses gnome-panel and run
gnome-session, but otherwise let FVWM do it's own thing.  For my wife,
I run it; it eases the transition from MacOS for her.

Thanks,

roland

---

From: Bob Crochelt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 22:41:23 -0900 (AKST)

Roland,
for what its worth, you could try kicker from KDE.  Probably no real 
advantage over gnome-panel.

Regards

PO Box 9399

[email-masked] or 
[email-masked]