Hello all,
I am currently using fvwm 1.24l (I believe) and aim to upgrade to
fvwm 2.0 as soon as I get to my new job in two weeks time. However, in the
meantime, I have a few suggestions for improvements over 1.24 that could
perhaps go into 2.0 or later. Maybe these have already been covered - it's
difficult to tell without actually installing 2.0, and having only recently
joined the mailing list.
1) The ability to add and delete desktops without restarting fvwm. I
currently use two desktops with just one page on each (ie. no scrolling).
I use the first desktop (named "Main") as a general desktop, and the
second (named "Net") as a surfing desktop which xrn, Mosaic, xftp, etc.
are configured to start on.
However, I found yesterday, that I had already filled "Main" and "Net"
with windows, and I wanted to start another "task" which would ideally
use a new desktop... See the problem ? In the end I resorted to
iconifying all the windows on "Main" to make space for the new work I
wanted to do.
2) The system menu of my windows include items such as Iconify and
(Un)Stick. I believe these were predefined in the sample
system.fvwmrc. I would like these menu items to perform in the same
way as in mwm, ie. Iconify (aka Minimize) would be greyed out once the
window is iconified. In the same vein, we could then have a Restore,
as mwm has which would be greyed out when the window is already
restored, but would be active when the window is iconified or maximised
in any way.
A slighty different approach might be applied to (Un)Stick seeing as it
is a two-state option, rather than the three-or-more-state option which
minimize/restore/maximize/etc. is. In this case, the text of the
option might change - ie. if the window is "stuck", the option might
say "Unstick", and if it is "free", the option might say "Stick"...
3) Programs that use the Motif system of adding menu items to the system
menu of the window do not work. A Motif program can also then activate
and deactivate those menu items using the WM_PROTOCOLS atom.
4) The IconBox functionality in 1.24 seems to line up icons on their
top-left corner. If the icons are different sizes and shapes this
looks very ragged. I'm not sure however what a better strategy would
be, other than my next suggestion for an enhancement...
5) Add an option to the IconBox functionality that applies gridding to the
icons based on the size of them. This allows the user to easily drag
icons around and have them line up nicely. Perhaps the first step
would be to just set a grid size in pixels, rather than base it on the
size of the icons themselves. I guess mwm kind of cheats here by
forcing all icons to be the same size - it makes gridding rather easy.
If this is added, then the following could be an enhancement to it:
o Force no more than one icon to a grid position - thus if the user
drops an icon into a grid position that is already occupied, it is
dropped instead into the nearest empty grid position.
6) Another nice feature would be to allow icon names to stay expanded
whilst they do not have focus.
Any comments anyone ? If I get a chance in my new job, and some of these
haven't been added, I wouldn't mind getting my hands dirty. ;-)
BTW, thanks Rob and Chuck for your commitment.
Cheers,
Jonathan.
--
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| Jonathan Monahan - X/Motif Systems Programmer, GUI Technology Group |
| Micro Focus Ltd., 26 West St., Newbury, Berks., RG13 1JT, UK |
| Email: jwm_at_mfltd.co.uk or IBMMAIL(GBHFFTHF) |
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Received on Fri Sep 29 1995 - 04:35:14 BST