>>>>> "David" == David Barth <barth_at_di.epfl.ch> writes:
David> H.Peraza and I made a quick hack around fvwm2.
When I saw that Subject line, a horrified shudder ran down my
spine... :) As everyone has probably gathered from my previous posts,
I really hate WinXX (any version).
But, my officemate really likes Win95, so I grabbed it and he's trying
your hack right now. Now that I've seen it, I feel like I can make
some comments. The first one being, that it looks interesting. I can
see why some people find that appearance visually pleasing.
David> This way, we hope to free the fvwm TODO list from the MS-windowish
David> requests.
Which is good, because I probably won't incorporate a lot of them.
But, some of them WILL be in the next beta release (out in the next
few days):
- pixmaps for titlebar buttons
- patch for better popups from modules (which would improve
the Start button popup), and the patch for caching the menu
xpms
I might be willing (if it's not too difficult and bloating) to add to
the foregound background specifiers to allow the titlebar to have a
different color scheme than the borders, which is the only other big
visual difference that I saw (I'm not counting the border style & menu
differences, as they seem pretty minor, so could probably be
overlooked).
....
David> Fvwm95 is a hack based on fvwm2.x. It tries to emulate the good features
David> of a well known product without bloating the regular fvwm code.
Always a good goal, the latter.
David> The main aspects are :
....
David> A taskbar: find quickly an application window and don't take space
David> with icon windows;
The task bar module should work fine under fvwm2.x, although it might
require some small mods.
A module could be written to display Win95 style menus, and that'd
work out ok after I add the ability to send arbitrary strings to
modules like was discussed on this list last week (which I plan to do
soon).
David> In the future, we plan to have a desktop/folder metaphor supported by
David> the window manager, as well as improve the current version.
I'm not exactly certain what is meant by that, but if you really wish
to make a specialized Win95 clone (perhaps because you don't think the
changes I'm making will let you get close enough to what you want just
via modules), you might want to do what bowman's author did and just
use fvwm code as a starting point, then make it a whole new
specialized window manager (I'd suggest renaming it if you do so
though) instead of trying to stay in sync w/ fvwm2, which will
probably be difficult.
While I don't want to bloat fvwm code, if I can make it so modules can
be used to get a different look and feel, I think that may be good,
and I'd probably be willing to include the modules in the distribution
(or at least a pointer to them in the FAQ & on the website).
The only problem being that the look might not be 'exact', but I bet
it could be real close.
David> PLEASE NOTE that fvwm-2.x is work in progress, so is fvwm95 too...
Which is why it may difficult for you to stay in sync, especially the
changes I have planned for after the first official release (The Great
Style Flags Rewrite, among other things).
If I can make this be possible via modules (as was discussed in the
past too), it would make your lives easier and give more potential to
fvwm.
Chuck
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Received on Thu Apr 04 1996 - 11:05:07 BST