Subject: Re: FVWM: Icons on FvwmButtons

From: [email-masked] (Mark Crimmins)
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 19:49:46 -0400

Todd Fries writes:
> You know, if you really wanted to make tkgoodstuff irresistible and live
> up to it's name, someone should implement a configuration dialog for
> fvwm itself, so we could configure fvwm on the fly and then save it to an
> rc when we liked what we saw.

> That would be killer!

Ok, go for it! ;-)

Actually something like that has crossed my mind.  Configuring styles, 
options, and some modules ought to be fairly straightforward using the 
tkgoodstuff configuration utility widgets.  Indeed, there's no reason to have 
much of an .fvwm2rc, since tkgoodstuff could send fvwm most of the rc file 
commands.

But the tkgoodstuff configuration tool now does not do "on the fly" 
configuration---it requires restarting tkgoodstuff.  Anyway, to do a 
reasonably general thing would be a lot of work, and right now I'm aiming for 
a relatively robust version of the current feature set to be ready by when 
fvwm2.1 is released (all bug reports welcome).

But I'd welcome a collaborator to work on this idea.

Mark

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---

From: Jacques Gelinas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 21:12:31 -0400 (EDT)

> > rc when we liked what we saw.

This has been a goal of a lot of people and it is a difficult task.
Is it ?

Some recent features of fvwm has shown a new way (and better way) of 
handling fvwm configuration. Since we can load/reload part of fvwm 
configuration separatly, it is now much more practical to define a set of 
configuration utility which each is much more easier to built and much 
more useful.

We have to turn this problem upside down. What does a new and existing 
user manipulate often in fvwm and at which moment.

Here is how I would split the task

1-Menu configurator

Currently, it is possible to reconfigure menu on demand. With the new 
PipeRead command for example, one can define a utility to edit/configure 
a menu and can also define a small utility to read it and update if needed
fvwm.

All my menus look like this

	title
	------
	opt
	opt
	opt
	------
	Config

When you click on "Config", this trigger the configurator for this menu. 
Whenever you save the new menu configuration, it becomes immediatly 
effective the next time you activate this menu. Currently my "Config" 
option just load a text editor showing this menu. This is already better 
than browsing the filesystem looking for a .fvwmrc and then browsing the 
kit.

(Those who are interested in my config files and my fvwmreadmenu utility 
(which was send to the maintainer for inclusion in the contrib part of 
fvwm), just email).

2-FvwmButtons configurator

It is now possible to kill/reload the fvwmbutton configuration since 
2.0.43. Again doing a configurator for such a thing is not that much 
difficult (more than doing a menu configurator however).

3-General setup of fvwm

This contain few (not all really) other feature. One utility (fvwmconfig 
I think) was already a good start allowing one to switch some key feature 
such as focus).

3-Style editor

	A fairly simple dialog allowing to activate some key feature 
application per application. I would hook this editor right in the 
application menu (left menu of each application window). This would 
configure the style for the running window/class.

Achieving 1 2 and 4 is not a big job and would satisfy most users giving 
them a straight way to modify most of the important things of fvwm.

I really don't think a big "config" utility is the key.

Anyone interested to help me with this ?

--------------------------------------------------------
Jacques Gelinas ([email-masked])
Linuxconf: The ultimate administration system for Linux.
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