Subject: FVWM: Keybindings and Cygwin/XFree86

From: Marcus Lundblad <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 22:03:31 +0200 (CEST)

At work we decided to dump XWinPro that we have used 'til now to access
the Linux servers and start to use Cygwin on the local PCs (to lighted the
burdon on the develop machine).

So I sacrificed a few hours this evening to get my script-based FVWM
config working and compiled 2.5.6 (since I use some cutting-edge features,
such as my vector button pixel offsets :-) ).

Mostly it works nice (except a lot of programs not present (like
ROX-filer, but no big deal, an RXVT is sufficent).
Though the keybindings are not working.

For example I have:

Key F1           R       N       Menu MainMenu
Key F1           A       M       Menu MainMenu

But when I press F1, I get the _built in_ Root menu.
Also I have Alt+F4 bound to "Close", this is intercepted ny the
"surrounding" Windows window, and asks if I really want to kill the
X-Server (I don't).

Is there some way around this?

(I really like the idea of not running Metacity and Bluecurve, the
"official" WM to use in Cygwin is wmaker. I would rather run FVWM. I hope
if I get it to work nicely, my boss might let me use it... :-) )

//Marcus

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From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 May 2003 16:10:24 -0400

> But when I press F1, I get the _built in_ Root menu.

NumLock?

> Is there some way around this?

Use another key?

-- 
Dan Espen                           E-mail: [email-masked]

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From: Marcus Lundblad <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 22:21:03 +0200 (CEST)

> > But when I press F1, I get the _built in_ Root menu.

That might be the case, but would the built in keybinding take presedence
then? Is it defined both with and without numlock?
 
> > Is there some way around this?

Well, I guess so...

//Marcus

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From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 May 2003 16:26:10 -0400

> then? Is it defined both with and without numlock?

The builtin binding is:

Key F1 R A Popup MenuFvwmRoot

So, any modifier is OK.

> > > Is there some way around this?

If the XFree window is grabbing the binding, perhaps there is something
in XFree that could be changed.

---

From: Perry Hutchison <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 13:41:42 -0700 (PDT)

> > > Is there some way around this?

I suspect that is the only way.  Windoze will interpret AltF4 as
"close current window", and the application (Cygwin) will get a
Close event which will be indistinguishable from what it would
see if you had selected Close from the (Windoze) File menu.

It's conceivable that there's some registry hack to have Windoze
use something else instead of AltF4 -- if so, it might be mentioned
in some of the Cygwin or VNC docs/FAQs/whatever -- or you could put
in a request to the Cygwin developers for Cygwin to

* automatically respond "no", instead of asking whether to kill the
  X-Server, and

* Pass the Close event to the X-server as an Alt+F4.

Either way, there's not much FVWM can do about it :(

---

From: Ben Winslow <[email-masked]>
Date: 05 May 2003 18:16:37 -0400

> if I get it to work nicely, my boss might let me use it... :-) )

I bring you a shimmer of hope (as I've used Cygwin's X server before--it
makes using Win32 a much less painful experience ;) -- Although fvwm
can't do anything about Windows grabbing alt-f4, the X server can: start
the X server with -nowinkill to disable alt-f4, and consider starting it
with -unixkill to make ctrl-alt-backspace do the same thing.

The command line options are documented in
http://xfree86.cygwin.com/docs/ug/cygwin-xfree-ug.pdf, which contains a
few other interesting options.  You might be interested in -fullscreen,
and -rootless exists in newer versions, although it's not documented in
that pdf.  I've personally found that -rootless is a little kludgy, and
I don't recommend it if you have edge flipping enabled as fvwm creates
small windows at each corner which will look strange without the rest of
the root window.

Dan Espen's numlock theory sounds likely for your F1 problem--don't
forget that you can use IgnoreModifiers if your PC turns on numlock at
boot and you can't turn that off.

Hope that helps,
-- 
Ben Winslow <[email-masked]>

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From: Marcus Lundblad <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 22:07:10 +0200 (CEST)

> with -unixkill to make ctrl-alt-backspace do the same thing.

Yes, this works just fine!

> small windows at each corner which will look strange without the rest of

I now use -nowinkill -unixkill -fullscreen
I will redefine alt+tab in Fvwm.

And good news is that my boss looked at the config and was quite satified,
especially about the pager (ability to drag between desks and out from
desks onto current screen).
So I might get the task to set up an official central Cygwin installation
with FVWM as the default WM :-)

//Marcus