I agree with the points you have made. I hope the current group of people who
are pondering an overhaul of FVWM take this into consideration. Perhaps if Fvwm
could gain a larger crowd it could reap more benefits of a larger crowd (more
development, perhaps money, etc.) I know most Fvwm users are anti-Microsoft,
but you can't deny MS's success.
a) I too like Win95 because it is very easy to configure. Yet, if you knwo what
you are doing, you can still alter the look fo it in advanced ways. I remember
even in Windows 3.1, there was a third party application that would replace the
standard GUI buttons with custom ones you could edit. Surely this is still
possible. But the idea of an easily configurable OS is what will make it
popular. Perhaps even simple plug-in schemes designed by the gurus that people
can tweak.
b) the mnenu system is great. I tried to mimick this with Fvwm. I created a
directory tree unfe rmy Fvwm configuration directory called menu. In their, Is
tarted by making links to the programs or scripts I would execute, or making
simple sccript wwrappers in place. I had an perl script that was read in
through FvwmPipe that travereded this directory making a menu tree as it went.
It worked fairly well until I wanted to add custom mini icons, and created a
small etxt foile for each one. It last its cleanliness then.
c) I've seen people try to do this for unix, but fail miserably. These are more
than just wrappers to shell commands.
d) The registry is a good idea in some cases, and bad in others. Primarily.,
thoguh, it is good because everything uses the same config format. Just a few
simple data types properly arranged and do so much (kinda like DNA.)
Unfortuneately, it makes it harder to go and rmeove a program by hand, and the
uninstall programs that supposedly do are not up to parf in my opinion.
Brian.
Michael Corrieri wrote:
>
> < Warning: Contains highly objectionable subject matter (win95)! >
>
> Hmmm.
>
> I just had to use my JBuilder again. I started mucking with the
> configuration options in Win95. When you do this you can easily
> understand why the public swallowed it whole.
>
> a) Anybody (even a complete novice) can configure their Win95 machine.
> Granted it is not as configurable as fvwm2, but it sure is easy.
> b) Their menu system consists of a file manager window, referencing an
> actual directory that represents the menu system. Simple drag and drop
> stuff.
> c) There are wysiwygs and gui tools for every thing in the system.
> d) The registry is the "database" that contains info about everything,
> system wide.
>
> My wife is scared to death of my Intel Solaris at work. At home, she
> thinks linux is a great idea, but is clueless on how to use it. She
> liked the fvwm2 when I made it look like a Mac. She was frustrated that
> she could not figure out how to modify it.
>
> A couple of years ago, when I installed Win95 for her, the very first
> time she sat down she made the system look like a mac. All by herself,
> day one. Pretty intuitive stuff. Not that I think the OS should look
> like a Mac, but it kinda makes a point.
>
> Just an observation.
>
> --
> Visit the official FVWM web page at <URL:http://www.hpc.uh.edu/fvwm/>.
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--
___________________________________________________________
| |
| Brian Sayatovic (mailto:bjs_at_iti-oh.com) |
| International TechneGroup, Inc. (http://www.iti-oh.com) |
|___________________________________________________________|
--
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Received on Tue May 05 1998 - 09:49:00 BST