Subject: FVWM: note from Prof Knuth

From: Maggie McLoughlin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 23:47:34 -0800

Dear fvwm [Jason I guess],

Today I installed version 2.4.17 and had one curious problem (that
did not exist in version 2.2 which I had been using for several years):
Namely, commands like
  *FvwmButtons(2x2+0+0, Icon zero.xpm, Action "Desk 0 0")
did not find the icon; I had to give the entire path name
  *FvwmButtons(2x2+0+0, Icon /home/icons/zero.xpm, Action "Desk 0 0")
even though I had said
  ImagePath /home/icons:/usr/share/icons
near the top of my .fvwm2rc file.

Other uses of icons, as in
  Style XTerm Icon royalshell.xpm, SloppyFocus, NoTitle
had no trouble finding /home/icons/royalshell.xpm.

If you want to see the entire .fvwm2rc file, including a screen shot,
you can find it on the web at
  http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs.html
near the bottom. Also given there are the icons zero.xpm, one.xpm,
two.xpm, and three.xpm that weren't found without full path names.

I've been a confirmed fan of fvwm ever since I started using this layout;
it increases my efficiency fantastically. Every other Linux window
system has bad ideas about the focussing --- every option of KDE
and GNOME is broken in some important way! Although the use of
full path names gets around my immediate problem, I thought you
would like to know about this apparent bug.

Cordially, Don Knuth

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---

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 14:04:09 +0000

> Dear fvwm [Jason I guess],

This is a mailing list with (I think) hundreds of subscribers.

> two.xpm, and three.xpm that weren't found without full path names.

This report looks strange since almost everyone uses FvwmButtons without
such problems. I saved your zero.xpm in /data/images directory and
executed these commands in FvwmConsole:

  ImagePath /data/images:+
  *FvwmButtons-Test: (2x2+0+0, Icon zero.xpm, Action `GotoDesk 0 0`)
  FvwmButtons FvwmButtons-Test

Everything works like expected in the latest 2.5.x and 2.4.x.

I think I know what is your problem, you configured fvwm to use the old
modules, this is why there is a communication problem between new fvwm
and old FvwmButtons regarding ImagePath.

Please remove ModulePath from your config. Do not comment this command
out or correct the path, just remove it completely. This command was
redundant even in 2.2.x. It makes some sence to use ModulePath in 2.5.x
if you write your own perl-based fvwm module and place it in, say,
~/.fvwm/modules directory. But then the path should always be prepended
with "+:" to include the built-in path to the modules, i.e.:

  ModulePath +:$FVWM_USERDIR/modules    # $[FVWM_USERDIR] works here too

There are other things in your configuration that may be converted to a
new syntax if you like this (please see the man pages then).

Regards,
Mikhael.