Subject: Re: FVWM: [2.0.44] Bugs in the fvwm2.man page

From: [email-masked] (David Kennedy)
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 00:17:01 GMT

Andrew said:
>  On Thu, 16 Jan 1997, Paul D. Smith wrote:
>  
>  > And some examples of good uses of decors, title styles, etc. is
>  > imperative.  I'm not necessarily saying all these should go in the man
>  > page, of course, but some comments somewhere to help one wade through
>  > the myriad features is mandatory.  I'm lost!
>  
>  Well, the problem is that examples need to be created.  Chuck mentioned
>  that he's looking for donations of RC examples (hint, hint :-).  It's
>  difficult for one person to come up with many examples, the best ones are
>  usually picked out from posts. 

Fair enough. The problem is that if you're trying to find out how these
things work from the man pages as they stand, you haven't got a hope!
It may even be worthwhile having a separate man page for the various
'decor' items now, there are many keywords involved and in the mainly
alphabetical listing in the (huge) main man page its hard to put them
together. A more organic approach showing a typical set up and then
a tree like structure of options for BorderStyle, ButtonStyle, TitleStyle,
etc.

Under the manual entry for 'ButtonStyle' at the moment there is even
a TitleStyle example! (Its about VGradient but still...)

It'd be much easier to read if all these 'cosmetic' decor commands
were grouped together. After all their syntax is quite similar.
And the syntax isn't as easy as it used to me, its harder to read
until you figure out where you are. Ever see a new fvwm user's
face looking at a UseDecor statement (well, neither had I until
today obviously...but it was 'Uh? Whats this? I thought I was
getting used to this ..rc stuff')

(It doesn't help that there are degenerate manual entries too...
	TitleStyle [justification] [height num]
	TitleStyle [state] [style] [ -- [!]flag ...]	)

Note, no-ones complaining about the functionality, just about
to use _all_ of the features. Lets face it, I want as many different
effects on the screen at once as I can get!

-- 
David Kennedy, The Queen's University of Belfast.
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---

From: Andrew Veliath <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 16:45:39 -0500 (EST)

> a tree like structure of options for BorderStyle, ButtonStyle, TitleStyle,

Fair enough ;-).  I am trying to put together a decor_hints file to give
an overview of the new features, but it is taking a while.  If anyone
wants to help, feel free.  Some of these things are not easy to do in the
current man page setup.

Maybe what I can do is when I can write up something of a small HowTo for
the new featurisms, then someone might want to rewrite some of the man
page entries. Having fairly intimate knowledge of internal operation of
these new features sometimes makes it difficult to write objectively about
usage, it might be better explained by someone who is familiar with these
features, but from a new perspective (thus the HowTo :-).

--
Andrew Veliath <[email-masked]>        http://www.rpi.edu/~veliaa
One day, all forms of communication will be superseded by a FAQ.
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