%% Brian Sayatovic <bjs_at_iti-oh.com> writes:
bs> I agree with the points you have made.
The problem is that the features you're alluding to often work across
application boundaries and areas of responsibility in UNIX and X
windows. This, I think, is a Good Thing, but it can make the seems look
more rough.
Things are really starting to come together with the advent of Gnome and
(although I don't like it on philosophical terms) KDE. Spurred by Linux
development and groups like Debian and RedHat, I think you'll see a big
push towards full GUI configurability for many basic tools very soon.
Heck, RedHat 5 already has many GUI tools for doing standard sysadmin
stuff; I configured my printer, including solving the infamous
"stair-stepping output" problem, with a very easy-to-use little GUI app
and a few mouse clicks.
Someone posted a graphical tool for modifying window manager
configurations, that supported fvwm2. You couldn't do everything, of
course, but you could do a reasonable amount of stuff. I haven't used
it and I forget the name, but you might consider that.
Also, you can go look at tkgoodstuff which is an alternative to
FvwmButtons writtine in tcl/tk that is completely GUI-configurable: you
create buttons and popup menus, etc. and move them with drag-n-drop,
etc. etc. Pretty simple to use, although FvwmButtons is more powerful.
bs> b) the mnenu system is great. I tried to mimick this with Fvwm.
bs> I created a directory tree unfe rmy Fvwm configuration directory
bs> called menu. In their, Is tarted by making links to the programs
bs> or scripts I would execute, or making simple sccript wwrappers in
bs> place. I had an perl script that was read in through FvwmPipe
bs> that travereded this directory making a menu tree as it went. It
bs> worked fairly well until I wanted to add custom mini icons, and
bs> created a small etxt foile for each one. It last its cleanliness
bs> then.
You should go look at wmconfig, created by someone at RedHat. This tool
reads config files and generates menu output for various window
managers. The idea is that tools ship with a wmconfig file and install
it when you install them, then the tools automatically appear on your
popup window (if you configure your WM to invoke wmconfig). It allows
for mini-icons, etc. and is pretty nice--the next version will be even
better :).
Many of the RedHat RPM's come with these config files.
Anyway, I don't think most of this is correctly discussed in the fvwm
mailing lists; the right place to solve them isn't by adding more code
to fvwm, but creating tools which more seemlessly integrate existing
apps--this is a "desktop" concept. I think you should go look at Gnome
and/or KDE, and see what they're up to.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul D. Smith <psmith_at_baynetworks.com> Network Management Development
"Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are my opinions--Bay Networks takes no responsibility for them.
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Received on Tue May 05 1998 - 11:07:28 BST